• JamboPay's contract with City Hall expired on April 7
• Webtribe CEO last month said they would not renew because of political interference and damage to their image
Image: EZEKIEL AMINGA
City Hall says the county is acquiring its own revenue collection system, though JamboPay is temporarily collecting.
ICT chief officer Halkano Waqo said the county has taken steps to ensure it has its own system.
Jambo pay is helping it migrate.
Waqo said that last week that, the county had managed to transfer all the data from JamboPay to the county's data centre.
JamboPay was contracted in April 2014 to automate revenue collection for five years.
"So far so good. Now we are analysing data that we transferred last week and putting all the other systems into place. The new revenue system will be a big achievement for the current regime," Waqo told the Star yesterday.
He said by the beginning of the 2019-20 financial year in July, the county will have set up its own Integrated City Revenue Management System.
The modern system City Hall is acquiring is a good fit with the best practices of technology at the moment, he said.
JamboPay works on the Local Authority Integrated Financial Operations Management System, which Waqo said is difficult and not up-to-date.
The Laifom system was installed to addressing several concerns local authorities faced in service delivery. However, it lacked proper record keeping, which resulted in a lot of problems.
"Laifom is very cumbersome, our next system is going to be modern and simplified so anybody can fit in without customisation,” he said.
Waqo also said the county had not renewed or extended JamboPay's contact as reported earlier.
"It is not a renewal. JamboPay is supporting us in the migration process for a few weeks. That is why they are still with us for a little longer," Waqo said.
Last week on Friday, it was revealed that the county had chosen to extend JamboPay's stay at City Hall, only two days to the expiry of the original contract on April 7.
The company had last Tuesday written to City Hall informing it that it would disable its system on Sunday night.
Last month, Webtribe(JamboPay's mother company) CEO Danson Muchemi had cited political interference, negative publicity and mistrust as some of the reasons why JamboPay should not renew its contract with City Hall after a five-year deal.
He said it portrayed the company in bad light.
In January, Webtribe announced it won't renew its contract with City Hall.
Waqo rejected claims the county was considering to go back to manual collection.
"Going back to manual has never been an option. This because we have heard before of how revenue has been lost and how it paved the way for corruption at City Hall. Unless it is a real emergency, manual revenue collection is not an option," Waqo said.
The Nairobi county assembly Budget and Appropriations committee earlier said it might consider changing selected revenue streams back to manual collection because of difficulties in online payment.