Quoting Section 3 Item 97 of the Limitation Ordinance (Sabah Cap 72), he said local authorities had six years to get motorists to settle their parking summonses from the date they are issued.
“This is the law and City Hall is bound by it. It cannot collect summonses or parking ticket dues that are older than six years,” he said.
“As such, it is advisable for City Hall to waive parking tickets and summonses that are beyond that time frame,” said Wong.
Noting that City Hall had issued more than 500,000 summonses for illegal parking and another 320,000 summonses for failing to pay parking dues through its coupon system since 2014, Wong said this was a symptom of a more serious problem in the state capital.
“At the end of the day, this situation can be traced to a single problem — the shortage of parking bays around the city, especially downtown,” Wong said.
He said while City Hall could boast of Kota Kinabalu having 10,000 parking bays, 70% of them were in commercial complexes and shopping malls.
“The remaining 3,000 are along the roads, used by 700,000 vehicles,” Wong said.
“Every year, there are estimated 5,000 additional new vehicles on our roads. You don’t need to be a genius to see what the problem is,” he added.
Crowds packed the grounds of City Hall on Feb 2 to take advantage of the one-day amnesty programme under which they only needed to pay RM10 for each summons issued.
Following appeals, on Sunday, Mayor Yeo Boon Hai announced that the amnesty period had been extended until Feb 9 and motorists could also pay for their summonses online through City Hall’s “dbkk eservices” website.