Members of the business fraternity in the central business district of Makhado (Louis Trichardt) are up in arms over the local municipality’s handling of the parking meter issue.

Irate business people, outraged by reported incidents of erratic and arrogant behaviour by municipal employees, perceive the municipality’s management of the repaired meters as a clumsy, unprofessional and hostile money-grabbing exercise, with an adverse influence on business. They also question the legality of parking tickets being issued while the new tariffs are not publicised on the meters. Especially visitors to the town are in for an unfair and unpleasant surprise, because they have no way of knowing that the tariffs on the meters are outdated.

A fact that is widely criticised is the absence of any visible effort by the municipality to inform and pre-warn the public about the repairing and recommissioning of the parking meters which were defunct for more than a year.

So far, there has also not been any effort to erase the outdated tariffs appearing on the meter faces and to publicise the new tariffs on the meters.

The manager of the Edgars branch in Makhado (Louis Trichardt), Ms Naomi Saunders, expressed the frustration of staff members who do not have access to their monthly prepaid parking bays on the upper level of the municipal covered parking facility behind the store, as a result of the resurfacing of an area in front of the drive-way.

"We are forced to park alongside Songozwi Street in the meantime, where municipal meter readers have a field day in writing parking tickets at random, even when the metered time has not expired. Our clients are being harassed and chased away by this totally unacceptable action," she said.

Together with several witnesses, she watched a meter reader writing a ticket for her own car at 12:50 on Tuesday this week, while the meter still displayed ample paid time. The time of the alleged "offence" was recorded as 10:45 on the parking ticket. When all these blatant irregularities were brought to the attention of the meter reader, Saunders was curtly instructed to "write a letter or to go to court" if she had any complaints.

She said she phoned a senior official at the municipal offices to report the incident. She was assured by the official that an official plus a technician would be dispatched immediately to investigate the matter. Nobody pitched and nobody phoned to explain or to apologize for the broken promise.