Good news thrifty drivers! Touch n’ Go will cease the imposing of the 10% surcharge found at contracted parking facilities.
We’ve spoken before about why Malaysians pay these surcharges – you can read about that in our article here. In that article, we pointed out that the 10% surcharge is not collected by Touch n’ Go, but rather the third-party vendors who run the parking facilities. The surcharge goes into maintaining the TnG facilities; note that in many cases, these vendors have to take care of existing ticketing machines alongside the TnG facilities.
These vendors work with TnG under contractual basis – and according to a report by The Star, TnG has said that the removal of this surcharge will be done gradually. Future contracts as well as renewals will not include a surcharge obligation.
The report also touched on the RM0.50 surcharge when topping up your TnG cards – Deputy of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Chong Chien Jen said that locations such as Watsons, Tesco, Guardian, KK Mart and Caring Pharmacy offer surcharge-free top-ups.
But we’ve also highlighted in our article the RM0.50 surcharge is imposed at some places because the top up service is offered by third-party vendors. Any surcharge collected does not go into Touch n’ Go’s wallets.
Regardless, we say kudos to TnG for taking these measures to make city commuting a little more affordable and convenient for everyone.