It’s easy money for the concessionaire of Robinsons Galleria’s upper parking lot on Ortigas Avenue. Not a few have complained that parking is so tight that a car owner would have finished his business inside the mall, and still his driver has not found parking space.

But the worst is yet to come: The parking attendant demands payment of P40. For what? For breathing in the exhaust from other cars waiting for parking space? For losing one’s patience? For losing one’s temper?

Malling is now an irreversible part of the Filipino lifestyle, which has been making billionaires out of mall tycoons. When are they giving back to their customers who patronize them? For starters, give them free parking, which is taken for granted at supermarkets and malls in the US and Europe. Bills in both Houses of Congress—think of that bill of former Senator Tessie Oreta—filed to provide shoppers with their well-deserved convenience of free parking have been like Mona Lisa: They just lie there, and they die there.