Kileleshwa Member of County Assembly Robert Alai has sounded an alarm over what he called opaqueness in the Nairobi Revenue Service named Nairobi Pay.
In a press briefing on Friday, October 27, afternoon, Alai poked holes in the system’s transparency alleging that external forces had interfered with the systems and hence the concerns.
According to the politician, key officers working for the Nairobi County government were not aware of the physical location of the system’s servers.
Among them, he listed the County Executive Committee (CEC) member for Finance and leaders of the ICT department as the people kept in the dark.
Alai, a vocal blogger, further claimed the key leaders did not have administrative rights or user rights of the NRS system, begging the questions of the identity of persons managing the system.
In his statement, Alai stated that the role of collecting revenue in the city should have been reverted to the government after the expiry of the Nairobi Metropolitan Service-NMS’ term.
“The entire finance and ICT sector do not know where the physical servers are, the CEC Finance do not have the administrative rights or user rights to the current system,” Alai stated.
“There is no valid contract between Nairobi County and the NRS as the principal revenue collector.”
According to Alai, Nairobi County has had multiple avenues of revenue including developers building apartments in the city, yet the collections do not reflect.
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He went on to state Nairobi has the potential of 135 revenue streams. However, the MCA said that almost half of them is not structured.
In the previous financial, he noted, Nairobi County should have collected more revenue than the reported Ksh10 billion from its own revenue sources.
Consequently, he noted, Nairobi County has underperformed in implementation of development projects due to lack of enough funds.
Alai explains how Nairobi can lend money to other counties
According to him, county revenue streams report as low of 10% of the total revenue collected hence hindering the county from accessing the much-needed revenue to run its operations.
In his presentation, Alai said that the county government has the capability of running its operations without depending on revenue allocation from the national government and even create a fund enough to lend money to other entities.
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He pointed out that sectors such as health and poor infrastructure as some areas that could benefit from an accountable revenue collection system.
“The systems are increasingly being manipulated to divert public funds to private individuals through collusion involving Governors, senior county officials, and companies providing the revenue management service,” he stated.
As such, Alai led his fellow MCAs in calling for reforms to make the system credible and transparent. He urged President William Ruto to push for integration of transparent revenue collection systems for all counties to ensure maximum benefit from devolution.
The County Government of Nairobi, however, had not addressed the concerns by Aalai and other MCAs.
