YOU have probably heard of bus cheats and road bullies.
Now meet the carpark abusers.
These are people who deny genuine park visitors of parking lots.
Some of them exploit the free parking services by leaving their weekend cars at the parks over the course of the day.
Then there are those who use the carpark as a park-and-ride centre - they leave their cars at these places and walk or take a short bus ride to their work places - saving on parking charges.
The National Parks Board (NParks) revealed these findings to The New Paper when responding to reader Seah Weixiang's letter, 'Mystery fine by NParks', published on 13Sep.
The NParks is concerned about the increasing abuse of free parking in its carparks, especially by weekend car owners and workers in factories and offices near the carparks.
To encourage people to make use of parks for recreation, parking is free at most parks in Singapore.
However, this privilege is increasingly being abused by non-park users, thus depriving genuine park visitors of the lots.
Other than Admiralty Park, which was mentioned in Mr Seah's letter, similar cases have also been noted at other parks such as Pasir Ris Park, Telok Blangah Hill Park and West Coast Park.
NParks' officers have been monitoring the situation in the carparks for some time.
Advisory
If a vehicle is found to be parked at the same lot over a certain period, NParks will first issue an advisory letter. It will continue monitoring the vehicle at different times of the day over a few days.
If the vehicle has not been moved, a fine of $30 is then imposed for failing to obey signs exhibited in the carpark.
This year alone, owners of about 300 vehicles have been fined for abusing the parking lots, with 12 fines issued at Admiralty Park.
Asked about repeat offenders, NParks said that it is monitoring the situation before taking further action.
In an e-mail to The New Paper, NParks' head of Parks Division, Mr Johnny Go, raised the possibility of charging parking fees to regulate usage.
As for Mr Seah's father, a frequent Admiralty Park user, NParks said his car was unfortunately mistaken as belonging to a non-park user and he was wrongly fined.
NParks said that the issue has since been clarified and the parking fine waived.
When contacted by The New Paper, Mr Seah said that although NParks made an effort to explain the rationale behind the fine, he described the way the fine was managed as 'contradicting'.
He wondered how NParks officers could differentiate between vehicles belonging to regular park users, such as his father, and vehicles belonging to non-park users.
He said he was not surprised that people are abusing the free parking, especially since the carpark is near an industrial area.
But NParks did have its supporters.
Madam Foo Wee Meng, who is in her 60s and a regular visitor of West Coast Park, said that while she could sympathise with people wanting to save money, she thought that their actions would cause inconvenience to genuine park users.
She said: 'I am okay with NParks imposing a fine to prevent non-park users abusing the free parking service.'
