Nairobi slows rollout of new parking system

Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Nairobi County has delayed the rollout of a new parking money collection system, giving the taxman more time to continue collecting the money.

The county government said the rollout of the new system, which was initially scheduled to begin Friday, will take place at a later date.

City Hall says it is still fine-tuning its new structure which would see parking fees paid by motorists transferred to devolved unit accounts after Governor Johnson Sakaja said he was parting ways with the Kenya Revenue Authority .

“Once we have a revenue collection system in place, we will invite media to interview and interact with the new system,” the county said in a statement. She contradicted her parking director who said earlier this week that the new system was finalized and motorists would start using it today (Friday).

“It is unfortunate that the staff cited in the article are not authorized to speak to the media on these issues without permission from the governor.”

The new system will see motorists use a new shortcode to pay parking charges. Currently, car owners dial *647# to pay parking fees, which are directly linked to the KRA account.

According to the county, one of the reasons they are opting out of the KRA is that the process was tainted with a lot of secrecy and they did not know how much money was being collected.

Mr Sakaja said the decision to remove the KRA from this role was driven by the fact that the taxman was not meeting targets previously set by county officials when they were in charge of this function.

KRA assumed the tax collection role on behalf of Nairobi County in March 2020, with officers allowing full and unrestricted access to county revenue.

The new county head transfers to the decentralized unit most of the functions that were previously devolved to other authorities. For example, the governor announced that he would not renew the mandate of Nairobi Metropolitan when his term ends in November.

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