County still losing revenue as officers steal parking fees
The electronic system Nairobi County government introduced to enhance its revenue collection in yet to bear fruit because some officials are sabotaging it.
It has emerged that most of the fees the government charges, including parking levies, still end up in the pockets of county government staff.
A new report on Wednesday revealed that less than half of city’s motorists pay parking fees but even then, the cash does not reach the Treasury.
The new system was introduced last year to check theft of county revenue by corrupt officials.
However, the system ran into a storm as some officers who had been colluding with parking attendants to defraud the county did not welcome it.
CONSPIRE
The report prepared by JamboPay, which, jointly with City Hall, is implementing the e-payment system, shows that only 43 percent of the motorists regularly pay daily parking fees because officials enforcing the system are opposed to it.
“They jointly with the attendants, conspire to pocket part of the money motorists paid as parking fees,” the report says.
Motorists pay parking fees of between Sh200 and Sh300 per day.
Other services available on e-pay are single business permits, land rates, house rents, liquor licenses and construction permits.
The county government is keen on increasing its revenue collection to fund its operations. Thus, it has introduced other measures to counter those sabotaging the system.
“The county has moved to tighten enforcement with acquisition of an additional 2,000 clamps expected to be delivered in the next seven days,” says the report.
The clamps are used to immobilise vehicles that fail to pay the parking fees. Owners of clamped private cars will pay Sh2,500. Motorcycles will pay Sh2,000 while saloon cars and matatus will part with Sh5,000.
County Treasury Officer Luke Gatimu said they only have 300 clamps at the moment.
The report says the e-payment system will soon have the capability of electronically clamping vehicles whose owners fail to pay parking fees.
CLAMP
After a car has been parked, a message must be received through cell phones that parking attendants will be issued with to indicate payment has been made failure to which a car will be clamped automatically.
Affected motorists will be required to pay the penalty electronically to have their cars freed.
Despite the challenges, JamboPay CEO Danson Muchemi is optimistic that things will get better.
“We have surpassed Sh1billion mark, just four months after it started operating. We had collected over Sh1.3 billion by Tuesday,” he said.