- The digital system is expected to raise revenue collection from about Sh50 million a month to over Sh100 million.
- The money collected will go direct to the county's bank account, stopping workers' contact with cash.
@Alicewangechi
Murang’a has started piloting a revenue automation service expected to double collections and improve services.
Motorists, traders and quarry workers will now pay levies through their mobile phones in a bid to stop plunder of resources by county workers.
Governor Irungu Kangata had accused some county workers of pocketing levies they manually collected and making it hard for the county to continue with its operations.
On Thursday, Kang’ata said the digital system will first run as a pilot before it is rolled out to cover other county operations.
“We will start with parking fees in Murang’a town then on Monday, we will pilot collection of quarry levies at the Kandundu quarry and on Wednesday next week, we will go to Maragua market to launch the pilot of market fees.”
He however cautioned residents that as a pilot, the system may encounter some challenges that will be smoothed out before it is officially rolled out.
The governor will have a dash board in his office through which he will be able to monitor how revenue is being collected across the county.
“This will counter pilferage of public resources and boost our revenue. We are still engaging Safaricom on the system,” he said.
He however affirmed that parking attendants will not lose their jobs and have been trained on how the system works.
He said their work has instead been made easier as they will only have to use their mobile phones to confirm if individual vehicles had paid for the parking fees.
Automation of revenue collection will also reprieve them as it will ensure that some of the challenges they experienced before such as salaries delays become a thing of the past.
The county Revenue Collection Officer Thomas Gakahu said the county has been using a manual revenue collection system that was vulnerable to pilferage.
The county have over 400 staffers distributed across the eight subcounties, making it hard to monitor their activities.
“With the automation, they will have no contact with cash and every supervisor will be able to see what is being collected from their offices. We hope to more than double our current revenue collection,” he said.
He said county workers have embraced the system and are open to it being rolled out to other operations.
On average, Gakahu said the county collects about Sh50 million a month and that that is expected to rise to Sh100 million after the automation.
-Edited by SKanyara