Five days after a man dug up the Housing Development Board (HDB) and Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) annual reports to question the increase in parking fees, HDB and URA has clarified with a joint statement on the costs involved in managing public carparks in Singapore.

These are the reasons given in the statement:

- Rising overheads in the construction industry;

- Improvements to new and existing HDB carparks, such as installing multi-storey carparks with lifts, and providing link bridges to connect carparks to surrounding flats;

- Additional repair works required to maintain an increasing number of ageing carparks.

HDB will lose an average of $100 million annually if they do not raise carpark prices which has stayed the same since 2002. The statement said that operating costs have risen 40% since 2002.

How are Singaporeans taking this news?

Here are some of the top-liked comments from The Straits Times report on the announcement:

On the issue of Electronic Parking Systems (EPS), ST's report cited its source as saying that it costs up to $150,000 to install the EPS at one carpark.

Currently 1,200 out of 2,000 HDB carparks have the EPS.

Top image from LHOON

If you like what you read, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest updates.