Nairobi News

NewsWhat's Hot

Sonko opens up for grilling in rare phone chat with Nairobians


Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko surprised city residents on Tuesday morning by inviting them to share with him their challenges through telephone calls to his personal number.

Governor Sonko gave out his cell phone number and encouraged city residents to engage him by calling him or texting him between 5am and 7.30 am.

“Good morning Nairobians. I will be receiving your calls from 5.50 am to 7.30 am. Use 0722886600 in case busy just text and I will call back. Urgent issues please especially on challenges we are facing,” posted Governor Sonko on his social media handles.

The gesture was well received by city residents, with some calling for the setting up of a call centre in order to enhance communication between City Hall and residents.

One Mr Amin Ali challenged the City Hall boss to set up a call centre with subsections that deal with each ward. The subsections will collect issues from every ward and then attach the tickets or complaints to the respective Ward Representatives and ensure resolution of the same within specified time.

“This is a good gesture but may not be viable, you need to set up a Call Centre with subsections dealing with each ward….you will have your head office guys also have the issues automatically escalated to them after lapse of certain amount of time. This will help in identifying the issues, allocating resources to the issues and tracking the resolution time of the issues,” he said.

The suggestion caught the attention of the governor who said: “We shall try to fix that issue of a call center. Thank you.”

One David Davis said the call centre will save the governor many trips across the city.

“Yes very digital idea. In fact Sonko could have these issues streamed to his office in real time to ensure issues are being resolved and also to see where he needs to focus. Brilliant idea though and hope sonko implements it.”

 

But there were others who thought the idea by the governor to engage residents directly was not practical.

One Daniel Chiedo said: “His idea of an open door and open call for more than 2million Nairobians is not practical.”