The state has sent out a warning to Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of state-owned agencies failing to declare all revenues collected on the eCitizen platform.
Speaking during a meeting with representatives of ministries and agencies, Immigration Principal Secretary Julius Bitok announced that CEOs found culpable of defying the order to use a unified paybill would be sacked.
According to him, the state was yet to realize full potential of revenue collection from government services despite statistics showing a significant growth.
He explained that revenue from government services had improved from around Ksh60 million per day to around Ksh 250-300 million since the adoption.
However, PS Bitok said projections had shown that the government would collect higher revenues if the directive had been implemented to the latter.
Further, the Immigration and Citizen Services Principal Secretary Julius Bitok under whose docket the eCitizen platform falls said the Government had noted a major variance between collected revenue and what was being reflected on the online platform.
“But the story is not consistent with what the government wants. We have realized that we have a higher potential than that,” the CS explained.”
Defiant CEOs Prevent Achievement of Revenue Target
According to the PS, an analysis of potential revenue from the over 11,000 services available on eCitizen against the amount declared by various agencies pointed to diversion of collected money.
Also Read: Government Collects Ksh4 billion Through eCitizen Platform
As such, Bitok attributed the discrepancy to continued cash payments for services against a presidential directive to process all online payments for government services through the 222222 paybill.
Further, the Citizen Services Principal Secretary announced that his docket was in talks with the Central Bank and other banks to crackdown on CEOs evading the requirement to transact all payments through mobile cash.
This came following a revelation that money not sent through the paybill ended up in accounts owned by individuals and hence depriving the state of the much-needed revenue.
“Let it not be you who will be found not being able to comply, you will have to explain and sometimes you may even have to lose your job because you’re not able to do what is supposed to be done,” he added.”
Also Read: President Ruto Merges all Govt Paybill Numbers into One
Earlier in June, the government introduced a unified payment system where citizens would remit all payments for services offered by state agencies.
Also, the goal, as declared by the President, was to enhance revenue collection and avoid loopholes where the state traditionally lost revenue.
Three months later, the government announced significant growth in the revenue with data from the Central Banks indicating that revenue collected in the month of October totaled to Ksh 4.6billion was collected up from the Ksh1.44 billion collected in June.
In addition, the amounts for July, August and September were Ksh2.362B, Ksh3.636B and Ksh4,233B respectively, as per the government.
