Sonko’s City Hall to splash Sh205m on “donated” platform to replace JamboPay
Nairobi County has set aside Sh205 million for the acquisition of its own integrated County Revenue Management system.
This comes after reports indicated none of the firms that applied to replace JamboPay met the technical evaluation criteria after a tendering process after the county had advertised for the contract in February this year.
Governor Mike Sonko, while appearing before Senate’s County Public Accounts and Investments Committee (CPAIC) last month, said that his administration will stop outsourcing for a revenue collection firm after the expiry of JamboPay contract, saying it has acquired own software for collecting income like land rates and parking fees.
The new development is contained in the latest County Fiscal strategy paper and the debt management strategy paper for the financial year 2019/2020.
The report revealed that out of the total Sh205 million budget, Sh191 million would be allocated towards the maintenance of E-payments whereas Sh14 million would be used for the installation of a Business Intelligent System.
However, this is contradicting Mr Sonko’s assertion while before senators when he said that the county had received a donation of a revenue-collection software from an undisclosed source in readiness for the expiry of JamboPay’s extended contract which ended today, May 7.
“Migration of data from JamboPay to our own data centre concludes on May 7 and will run on a software donated to us, so no procurement was done,” said Governor Sonko at the time.
JamboPay has been collecting revenue on behalf of City Hall since 2014 but its contract expired on April 7, 2019. This was then extended by another month to ensure smooth transition.
On his part, Nairobi County ICT chief officer Mr Halkano Waqo said the county was implementing steps to ensure that the county had its own revenue management system and Jambo Pay was helping with the migration of systems.
He said City Hall elected to set up its own integrated revenue management system after JamboPay announced in January that it would not renew its contract with the county.
“The county managed to transfer all the data from JamboPay to our data centre and the new revenue system will be a big achievement for the current regime,” said Mr Halkano.
JamboPay CEO Danson Muchemi yesterday said that they were still in negotiations to see whether the contract would be extended for a second time.
“As a company, we are still in negotiations to see whether the county will extend our contract even as they strive to set up their own system,” said Mr Muchemi.