Reduced parking fees costing City Hall more than Sh300k daily
City Hall loses at least Sh300,000 daily in parking fees since the implementation of the new Sh200 daily parking fees by the county.
Nairobi County director of parking services Tom Tinega said that revenue from parking fees has dropped from the daily average of Sh1.5 million before the introduction of the new charges to an average of Sh1.2 million currently.
Mr Tinega, however, said that the volume of private motorists parking in the capital city has increased from a previous daily average of 4,500 to the current average of 5,200.
The county government effected the reduced daily parking fees on Monday, January 14 this down from the previous charge of Sh300.
A week preceding the taking into effect of the new rates, the county raked in Sh1.54 million on January 7 from 4,674 vehicles that were parked that day.
This then dropped to Sh1.52 million the following day from 4,608 vehicles, the drop continued as January 9 recorded Sh1.51 million from 4,509 vehicles, January 10 had Sh1.5 million from 4,485 and January 11 recorded Sh1.45 million from 4,375 vehicles.
After the implementation of the new daily charges, the county recorded a revenue of Sh1.3 million on January 14 from 5, 034 vehicles, Sh1.29 million from 5, 513 vehicles the following day and Sh1.21 million on January 16 from 5, 111 vehicles.
COLLECTED REVENUE
On January 17, the county collected Sh1.26 million from 5, 323 vehicles while on January 18, the revenue dropped to Sh1.22 million from 5, 204 vehicles.
However, Mr Tinega defended the county’s move explaining that their core mandate is to deliver services to Nairobi residents and not making profit besides implementing pledges made by Governor Mike Sonko to the capital city residents.
“Yes, we are losing revenue but the core mandate of a county government is to deliver service to Nairobi residents and not to make profit. We are just trying to collect tax to continue delivering the services to the people. This is part of the pledges that Governor Sonko promised to Nairobi residents,” said Mr Tinega.
The director said to cut on the losses, the county plans to enforce a number of measures including increasing parking space both on-street and off-street, reduce the number of parking attendants to control collusion between them with motorists and also step up enforcement.
He said that City Hall is planning to build a multi-storey building parking lots in the city centre to accommodate more vehicles in partnership with interested private firms.
He further said the Sunken parking area located between Aga Khan Walk and Taifa Road, off Harambee Avenue has been identified for one such building.
OFF-STREET PARKING
“The duty of the parking attendants is mainly to assist motorists in making payments by guiding them on how they can do it digitally while the work of enforcement team is to inspect the vehicles and confirm with the parking attendants whether the fee has been paid in order for them to clamp the non-compliant vehicles,” he said.
On off-street parking, Mr Tinega said the county government plans to increase more spaces in off the Central Business District (CBD) like in places like Westlands, Ngara, Upper Hill and Pangani to ease the pressure on the available spaces.
“We are working on about three to four off-street parking areas as we strive to expand parking spaces. We will do an expression of interest and identify the firms that will agree to partner with us,” he said.
Last year in March, the Nairobi County Assembly passed a motion where they urged the Executive to consider developing multi-storey parking lots in all available county plots within the greater Central Business District especially parking space adjacent to the Supreme Court and near Sunken parking lot.
During the previous regime, a proposal by the Nairobi County Government to build a parking building under the Public-Private partnership (PPP) framework had been then approved by the PPP Unit at the National Treasury.
The project was to provide an 11 multi-storey parking silo which was to add about 4,500 new parking spaces.