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Monday, April 25, 2011

Woman kneels in carpark after car gets clamped

http://motoring.asiaone.com/a1media/motoring/04Apr11/images/20110423.222529_wheelclam_bg.jpg

It began at 7.10pm on Sunday when Mr Teng noticed a car with an unfamiliar licence plate in the carpark managed by Bronsan Inters-furni Contracts & Services.

At the car park's entrance and the exit are signs stating: "Unauthorised parking will be wheel clamped without prior notice."

The signs also clearly state that the carpark is private property, and that the release fee for the wheel clamp is $100.

After checking that the car did not belong to a customer of any of the shops there, including the I Love U KTV Pub, he placed a warning notice under a windshield wiper.

According to protocol, Mr Teng is required to give a 15-minute grace period before clamping an illegally parked vehicle. He must also take a photograph (with a time stamp) to show the time he clamped the vehicle.

In the woman's case, the photo showed that it was 7.29pm. He then went about his duties and received a call from the woman at 9.06pm at the number which he had written on the notice.

Not only did a woman driver ignore the sign and park her car there for almost three hours, she refused to pay the $100 fee to have her car unclamped when the inevitable happened.

Worse, she started crying and kneeling down in front of the parking attendant, and begged him to let her off the hook.

And she did it for a full 30 minutes until some sympathetic passers-by pooled their money to pay the fee for her.

All these antics came from a woman who can afford to drive a mid-range continental car and employ a domestic helper - just to escape paying $100 for something she did wrong in the first place.

Her actions have resulted in the 58-year-old attendant, who wanted to be known only as Mr Teng, being labelled as uncompassionate and heartless - for doing his job.

Mr Teng does not dispute the claims that he was unmoved by her tears and had even watched her cry as she knelt in front of him.

He said he had no sympathy because he believed it was just all an act from her, since she had initially held out two $50 notes but refused to give it to him.

The woman, whom he said looked to be in her 30s, had tried to pull her "pitiful" act even before she started kneeling, he said.

If he had let her off, he would have had to account for the $100 fee and pay it out of his own pocket.

"You can't expect me to be moved by her tears. I am only doing my job. If I help her, who's going to help me if I lose my job?" he added.

But some regulars at the KTV pub felt sorry for the woman.

Mr Daniel Goh, 42, who works in sales, was in the pub when his friend, who arrived at about 9.45pm, told him about a woman kneeling on the road.

After the pub staff told him she had been kneeling for half an hour, he went out to check on her.

Said Mr Goh: "It was a pitiful sight. She was begging the attendant to unclamp her wheel but he didn't care."

The sight of her tears as she knelt beside her dark blue Opel Vectra GTS touched Mr Goh and his four friends so much that they chipped in to pay the $100 fee.

When TNP told Mr Goh about Mr Teng's claim that the woman had the $100 to pay the fee, he was shocked.

He said: "If she had money in the first place, why did she want to kneel there and look like a stupid fool?"

ORIGINAL SOURCE

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