Ward representatives have raised concerns that Nakuru County might not meet its Sh2.2 billion revenue target for the current financial year.
This follows revelations from a report of the county assembly committee on Finance tabled by its chairman Joel Karuri yesterday, that only 40 per cent of the revenue stream is automated.“The county’s revenue management system contract ended in November. The county had set aside Sh40 million for procurement of a new system in the current financial year,” said the committee’s vice chair Kibet Kurgat.
Collected manually
Douglas Ayabei of Marioshoni Ward, who is also a member of the Finance Committee, while agreeing that Nakuru County had great potential, said the lack of automation could lead to huge losses.
“Our current system collects 40 per cent of the revenue and the rest is collected manually. There is a lot of pilferage between collection and submitting of the revenue to county accounts,” said Mr Ayabei.Gilgil MCA Jane Wangui told the house that some rogue officers manning cess barriers were pocketing the daily collections and only remitting a fraction to the county government.
The house committee on Finance last year went for a bench-marking tour to Kiambu County, which has been praised for its stellar performance through an end-to-end automated revenue collection system.
A similar system being used in Kiambu County saw its revenue collections grow from Sh1.1 billion to Sh2.7 billion in the last financial year.
Structured revenues
The Assembly wants the county government to ensure the new system brings together the collection of structured revenues such as land rates and business permits and the unstructured revenues such as parking fees and cess charges.
MCAs say an automated system would ensure transparency and curb revenue loss at the collection level,” said the Speaker.When reached for comment, Governor Lee Kinyanjui said the county was in the process of procuring a new system.“Contract for the old system expired but the service provider was given a six months extension ending May 2020 to avoid any disruptions. Tender for a new system was advertised on October 9 and the process is almost complete,” said Mr Kinyanjui.
