PARKING PLACES (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read. 1.50 pm

The Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology (Dr John Chen Seow Phun): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Sir, the objective of this Bill is to amend the Parking Places Act (PPA) for the following purposes:

a) to transfer to the Land Transport Authority (LTA) the power to provide suitable public car parks for vehicles;

b) to extend protection from liability for Assistant and Deputy Superintendents of Car Parks;

c) to add a general provision to cater for the future implementation of an Electronic Parking System; and

d) to empower the Superintendent to immobilise or remove any vehicle which is parked in a public car park and which is owned by a motorist against whom there is an outstanding warrant of arrest in connection with a traffic or parking offence.

Sir, let me now address the key provisions of the Parking Places (Amendment) Bill.

First of all, clause 2 of the Bill repeals and re-enacts section 4 for the purpose of transferring the power to provide public car parks for vehicles from the Minister to LTA. Currently, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology approves and gazettes the Parking Places Order which designates new HDB and URA car parks, and prescribes the parking charges for them. Generally, new Parking Places Orders are processed and gazetted once a month. To streamline the procedures and processes, the power to provide public car parks will be transferred from the Minister to the LTA. Public car parks will be designated by a parking sign planted on site, in lieu of a Parking Places Order. The prescribed parking charges will be displayed on the parking sign. The certified car park plans will be available for public inspection. The power to approve parking charges will remain with the Minister for Communications and Information Technology.

Clause 5 seeks to confer on the Superintendent protection from liability for the loss of or any damage to any vehicle parked in any parking place, or for any injury or death suffered by any person in any parking place. With the amendment, the Assistant and Deputy Superintendents of Car Parks, who are HDB and URA staff, will enjoy the same level of protection in discharging their duties as staff from the Land Transport Authority. Currently, the Parking Places Act only protects the LTA and the Government from such liabilities in the parking places.

Clause 6 seeks to cater for the future implementation of electronic parking systems.

Clause 8 empowers the Superintendent to immobilise, or remove and detain any vehicle which is parked in a public car park, and which is owned by a person against whom a warrant of arrest is in force for a traffic or parking offence. The Superintendent will release the vehicle only when he is satisfied that the owner of the vehicle has been arrested, or has surrendered himself to a police officer, or the warrant of arrest in force against him has been cancelled by a court.

The definition of the term "warrant of arrest" in clause 8(d) covers any Warrant of Arrest issued by a court against a person in connection with an offence committed by this person under the Road Traffic Act, the Parking Places Act, and the rules made under these Acts. This is to ensure effective enforcement against motorists against whom outstanding warrants of arrest are in force.

As highlighted earlier in my speech on the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill, the large number of outstanding warrants of arrest is a matter of serious concern as it shows that enforcement against motorists who have refused to settle their offences has not been effective. Tougher measures are necessary to send a signal that there must be respect for the law, and that motorists who commit traffic or parking offences must be responsible enough to either compound the offences when given the opportunity to do so, or to attend court in relation to the offence when required to do so.

Clause 9 enables the Superintendent to serve on a person any summons, notice, order or document required under the Parking Places Act or its rules, by publication in the Gazette, if the Superintendent is unable to ascertain the person's usual or last known place of residence, after reasonable diligence is exercised.

In conclusion, the proposed amendments to the Parking Places Act will enable URA and HDB to take tougher measures against motorists against whom outstanding warrants of arrests are in force, by immobilizing or removing their vehicles at parking places. Taken together with the proposed amendments to the Road Traffic Act, enforcement action against such motorists will be tightened. This will ensure that there is proper respect for the law, and that the massive backlog that the courts are currently experiencing will be cleared.

The proposed amendments will also streamline the operations involved in designating HDB and URA car parks, and facilitate the work of the Superintendent in issuing summonses and notices to offenders. Car park Superintendents will also be granted protection in the course of discharging their duties.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question proposed.

Assoc. Prof. Chin Tet Yung: Mr Speaker, I rise to speak in support of the Bill. I only have a couple of concerns.

The Bill confers the Land Transport Authority to provide for parking spaces in Singapore. Clause 2, proposing the new section 4 subsection (2), states that the Authority is under a duty to ensure that in the provision of such parking spaces, it should not unreasonably prevent access to premises or use of the roads by others. The provision of such spaces should also not be a nuisance to any person.

I should like to ask the Minister whether the difference in language between the repealed section and the new proposed section is intended. In the repealed section, the provision of parking spaces should not be a "nuisance". It is proper to interpret this word most likely to refer to public nuisance, that is, the Authority can provide parking places unless such provisions become a public nuisance. Of course, as it stood, the word is ambiguous enough to include private nuisance but this is by no means well-established in case law. The new provision states "nuisance to any person". I wonder whether this is intended to allow any person adversely affected to complain and possibly to bring an action against the Authority to remove parking places that cause a nuisance to him or others like him.

Perhaps the Minister can clarify what is intended in this change in the language of the section. In other words, is it intended that a private person can bring a private nuisance action against the authority? This would, undoubtedly, I am sure, complicate the general provision of car parks in Singapore. For example, HDB residents staying next to car parks may complain about the nuisance of listening to squeaking brakes and squealing tyres as vehicles make their way through these car parks. Can they now apply for an injunction to stop the use of the car park until the Authority has installed a surface that would not be so noisy? It would be good if the Minister of State could clarify this aspect.

The Bill also includes a provision that refers to the situation dealt with in the earlier Bill that was just passed, namely, where a person is under a warrant of arrest, his vehicle may now be seized by a Superintendent. The inclusion of such a provision in the Parking Places Act, of course, means that even in the case of illegal parking, the person against whom a warrant of arrest is issued can have his vehicle immobilised, seized and even sold. Again, I would like to draw attention to the fact that there is some unease that no distinction is made in the Bill between those who habitually ignore summonses and those who may be going through the process for the first time.

Sir, the legislation that we are considering today, in my view, does not really deal with the root causes of why there is so much illegal parking, especially in the new housing estates. The provision of multi-storey car parks in favour of open car parks in the new housing estates means that even medium height goods vehicles have difficulty finding parking space at a reasonable distance from their flats.

An even more acute problem relates to heavy vehicles. Very often, heavy vehicle parks are some distance away from the main housing areas. That is understandable because the noise from these vehicles early in the morning may be regarded as a nuisance. However, it is also true that many of these vehicle owners were compelled to park illegally because of the lack of public transport that would take them to their vehicles very early in the morning. I hope that as the Authority is now in charge of the provision of car parks, it will work together with HDB, URA and the public transport companies to rationalise the provision of parking places in Singapore. Provision of suitable parking places is, of course, important. Making sure that the owners of vehicles can get to them in time is equally important, if not more. I hope that the Minister of State can address these problems before using the criminal law that can have such adverse effects not just on the drivers or the owners of vehicles but also on the families concerned.

Sir, I support the Bill but implore the Ministry and the Land Transport Authority to take the necessary steps to perform their statutory duties of providing good and convenient parking places in Singapore.

Mr Zulkifli Bin Baharudin (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise to support the Bill, but wish to highlight two clarifications for the Minister, especially with regard to new section 4 where the Land Transport Authority is now given powers to provide suitable parking places for vehicles.

Recently, with the introduction of new enforcement measures in the central business district (CBD), there has been feedback about the problems faced, specifically, by courier companies and those who provide such despatch services, and there are two points here which I would like to raise. One is with regard to operation and the other the perception of fair play and equity.

First, it is important to recognise that in any major city like Singapore, it is important to have the services of very efficient courier service providers to move documents, parts and samples from place to place within the central business district. This is a crucial and very essential part of our infrastructure.

The current legislation requiring couriers to park their vehicles only at designated lots is, at best, very inconvenient. They could park at the basement, leave their vehicles and part of their products behind, and move to a few floors upstairs, pay their parking charges and all that. It is going to be very inconvenient. It certainly has affected the productivity of a lot of these courier companies. If you can understand that as very important and essential, then I would like to ask the Minister to consider whether he would have a scheme whereby certain public parking lots can be provided in front of buildings as such essential services can be provided to facilitate these people to go about doing their work. We could charge a flat fee to allow certain companies who provide such services to participate in a programme, because they are parking their vehicles all around the central business district the whole day. I think we could do more things to refine and facilitate such services, and I hope the Minister of State would consider this carefully.

Secondly, we will find issues of competition. Singapore Post, CISCO and somehow people like Telecom do provide services which sometimes can be considered in direct competition with private courier companies. But here, there is a problem because sometimes people feel that the enforcement agencies are more lenient when they see a CISCO van in certain parking places compared to other courier companies, for example. And I think this is very unhealthy because if quite clearly they do only critical and essential jobs, that is fine. But what is more difficult is that these companies do more and more commercial businesses, in direct competition with other commercial companies. I think the level of enforcement, the level of fair play of these people who are authorised to do that and how they carry out the job between CISCO and Government-related companies vis-a-vis private companies must be taken with care.

Sir, I hope the Minister of State can assure this House that in discharging such responsibilities, proper care is taken that some of these companies are not unnecessarily disadvantaged or targeted in the course of doing their work. I hope the Minister can clarify these two points.

Dr John Chen Seow Phun: Mr Speaker, Sir, before I answer the specific questions, I would just like to clarify the point I made earlier in response to Mr Simon Tay's question about parking offences. He asked what would happen if the owner was not the person who committed the offence. At the moment, the law does allow the registered owner to clarify upfront that he is not the one who committed the offence. Of course, if he makes a false declaration, then the law will go after him.

Firstly, let me address Prof. Chin's point about the nuisance issue. We have consulted the Attorney-General and his view is that the word "nuisance" in the original section 42 of the Parking Places Act is unqualified. So it is wide enough to cover both public and private nuisances. The new section 42 refers to causing a nuisance to any person. Words in the singular include the plural, under section 21 of the Interpretation Act. This means that the amended wording should be read to refer to nuisances caused to any person or persons. Therefore, we do not think that the amended wording would create any different consequences compared to before. But I thank Prof. Chin for expressing this concern. If there is any problem that we face later on, we can always come back to Parliament and tighten the law.

Secondly, he also asked whether trivial offences like illegal parking would necessitate such measures. Again, let me say that the Bill does not only target at illegal parking offences. In fact, it covers all Road Traffic Act-related offences plus Parking Places Act offences. And so long as a person against whom there is an outstanding warrant of arrest, the Superintendent of Car Parks can actually immobilise his vehicle in his area of jurisdiction. Therefore, we must look at the amendment in that regard.

Parking provision is a separate issue. At the moment, there is no shortage of parking places island wide. In fact, in the new towns, HDB and URA have car park planning norms, and there is generally no shortage. But, of course, he mentioned about the problem of heavy vehicles. Again, nation wide, there is no shortage of heavy vehicle parking places. Yes, heavy vehicle owners want to park right in the centre of the town, but there are land constraints to cater for that kind of demand. We have interim heavy vehicle parks near the estates, but this is a separate issue and the Government is in the process of looking into how to tackle this problem in the long term. Having said that, this does not give them the right to park illegally and, therefore, any illegal parking will be dealt with according to the law.

Mr Zulkifli talked about the despatch services in the CBD and asked whether public parking lots can be created. He is aware that there are bays, lanes or car parks where despatch service vehicles can be parked and, where possible, there will be car parks provided along the roads. But we have to bear in mind that the CBD traffic is very heavy and therefore if we were to allow indiscriminate parking or to set up car parks along some of the roads, then the impact to the traffic can be very adverse. So, much as we like to help them, there are the other greater objectives, in other words, to keep traffic free flowing and ensure that there will be no danger to other road-users. I would urge that the despatch services abide by the law and park legally.

As for his comment on Singapore Post and CISCO having an advantage over the other courier companies, this is something that I am not aware of. If he has any specific example, he can bring it to the attention of the enforcement agency. I think the law treats everybody equally.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. - [Dr John Chen Seow Phun].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.