Africa-Press – Kenya. City Hall has issued a statement after Nairobi’s online payment platform went out of service ultimately causing a number of services to be inaccessible.
The Nairobi County Government noted that the downtime was caused by ongoing maintenance, but promised the issue would soon be resolved.
The Nairobi City County e-Payments portal offers a number of services such as single business permits, fire inspection certificates, land rates applications, renewal of health and food handlers’ certificates.
“We will be back soon. Sorry for the inconvenience but we are performing some maintenance at the moment. You can always contact us, otherwise, we will be back online shortly,” read part of the message.
Others include payment of parking fees, betting control permit verification, liquor permit verification, e-construction verification, advert verification, among other payment services.
Reports indicate that the breakdown is expected to cost the county government millions of revenue collection.
According to past revenue data, City hall collects at least Ksh135 million for e-construction permits, Ksh100 million for seasonal parking, Ksh36.42 million for daily parking among other payment collection.
Further, the county government failed to meet its revenue target collection of Ksh6.6 billion between January and March 2021 as it managed to collect Ksh4.1 billion.
The breakdown also raised the ire of a section of Nairobi residents who complained of not being able to access the services.
“I have tried applying for the food handlers certificate online but the website has been down for weeks. I then decided to go to City Hall Annex only to be turned away being told that I have to wait for the website to function again,” a business owner lamented.
The online portal is part of the government’s initiative to go digital and enable Kenyans to access services online.
Recently, President Uhuru Kenyatta alongside the Ministry of Lands launched the National Land Information Management System (NLIMS) known as Ardhisasa in a bid to enable Kenyans to access land transactions services remotely.
“At the click of a button, users will now be able to search and carry out various land transactions, drastically reducing human interactions, delays and other inconveniences previously experienced at land registries,” Uhuru stated.
