How systems failure denies Nairobi revenue

Nairobi City County has been losing millions of shillings in revenue due to the failure of the tax collection systems.

This was revealed by the County team in charge of urban planning and parking fee revenue when it appeared before an ad hoc committee on revenue collection.

It was revealed that many property owners fail to remit their payments anytime the system fails while those who pay reverse the transactions. Motorists have been accused of being the most notorious in reversing transactions.

“Now and then we experience some downfalls in the systems and parking is the greatest casualty. Some of the parking fees are supposed to be collected immediately, especially around the banks and malls but when the system is down, we lose a lot of money because the motorists park for a few minutes and leave,” Lucy Kanini, the officer in charge of loading zones explained.

Lack of title deeds for land and buildings had also contributed to failure to collect revenue from the property owners. The committee was told that out of nearly 180,000 property owners that is in the new system, approximately 177,000 remit revenue.

From yesterday’s hearing, it was established the system needs to be thoroughly improved for the county to avoid losing more revenue.

At the same time, National Bank of Kenya has said the contract with the Nairobi City County government still runs until next year because of the unpaid areas owed to them by the county.

“We received the letter notifying the end of the contract by the end of six months as per the signed contract. But according to NBK the contract still runs as the county has not remitted to us the pending bills owed to us,” Director of Legal Services at NBK Samuel Mundia said.

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