Counties
Nairobi applies brakes on new parking system rollout
Friday September 02 2022
Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Nairobi county has delayed the roll out of a new parking cash collection system, allowing the taxman more time to continue collecting the money.
The county government says the roll out of the new system, which was initially expected to start Friday, will happen at a later date.
City Hall says it is still making final touches on its new structure that would see parking fees paid by motorists transferred to the devolved unit accounts after governor Johnson Sakaja said he was parting ways with the Kenya Revenue Authority.
“Once we have a system in place for revenue collection, we shall invite the media to interrogate and interact with the new system,” the county said in a statement. It contradicted its director of parking who had said early in the week that the new system had been finalised and motorists would start using it today (Friday).
“It’s unfortunate the staff quoted on the story is not authorised to speak to media on the said matters without authorisation from the governor.”
The new system will see motorists use a new shortcode in payment of the parking fees. Currently, car owners dial *647# to pay for the parking fees, which is directly linked to the KRA account.
According to the county, some of the reasons why they are disengaging KRA is that the process was marred with a lot of secrecy and they did not know how much was being collected.
Mr Sakaja said the decision to strip KRA of the role was informed by the fact that the taxman was not meeting set targets previously attained by county officials when they were in charge of that function.
KRA took the role of collecting tax on behalf of Nairobi County in March 2020 with officers allowed full and unlimited access to county revenue.
The new county boss is reverting most of the functions that had been previously been vested to other authorities to the devolved unit. For instance, the governor has announced that he will not be renewing the tenure of the Nairobi Metropolitan when its tenure comes to an end in November.