• Acting County Secretary Patrick Analo made it clear that the county uses a revenue collection portal called the Nairobi Revenue Services (NRS).
• He said the revenue collection system was developed and deployed by a multiagency team of the National Government without the involvement of any private vendor.
Image: PCS
Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja's administration on Friday addressed concerns surrounding Nairobi revenue collection.
This is after concerns were raised by the Nairobi County Assembly and EACC over claims of accountability deficits in the capital's revenue management systems.
The MCAs had earlier addressed a press conference saying the Nairobi Revenues Services lacks transparency and accountability.
The assembly's Energy and ICT Committees claimed that one year down the line, the Governor Johnson Sakaja-led administration doesn't have access to the system collecting revenue on behalf of the county.
The revelations came at a time when the EACC listed Nairobi as one of the counties with serious accountability deficits in their revenue management systems.
In a statement, however, the county clarified that they were aware of revenue collection and its management.
Acting County Secretary Patrick Analo made it clear that the county uses a revenue collection portal called the Nairobi Revenue Services (NRS).
Before then, City Hall was collecting revenue through the National Bank.
"NRS is an Integrated County Revenue Management System (ICRMS) conceptualized by the Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Council (IBEC), which is established under the Intergovernmental Relations Act (IGRA) 2012," he said.
The system was developed and deployed by a multiagency team of the National Government without the involvement of any private vendor.
This means that the system is wholly owned by the Government of Kenya
"NRS is the only integrated Management System for service delivery and revenue collection in Nairobi City County which was executed in a memorandum of agreement by the county government, Nairobi Metropolitan Services and KRA," Analo added.
The MCAs listed seven irregularities in the management of the Nairobi Revenue System.
The MCAs claimed that the current and the previous CeC for Finance are not aware of the current collector and manager of the revenue system in the County, popularly known as the Nairobi Revenue System (NRS).
It was also revealed that the Finance and ICT sectors under the executive do not know where the physical servers of the NRS are including details of the cloud servers.
"The Finance executive members do not have administrative rights to the current revenue collection on the system," reads the statement.
But the county in a rejoinder clarified that all licence expenses including the hosting costs are catered for by the National Government through the Ministry of ICT.
City Hall, however, said they only cater for operations costs such as SMS costs, internet costs and end-user devices.
In terms of where the server is located, the Sakaja-led administration revealed that they are in several National Government Data Centres.
Revealing the efficiency of NRS, City Hall revealed that the system has implemented workflows that cut across various sectors within the county with revenue assessment being the last stage in the workflows.
These include applications, approvals, inspections and transfers that are all carried out in the system e.g. for Building Approvals, Subdivisions/Amalgamations, Loading Zones allocations, County Housing Management, Health and Fire Certificates, and Advertising among others.
City Hall also noted that all funds end up in two county-owned bank accounts.
"It is instructive to note that all money collected by Nairobi City County is banked directly into the county’s two bank accounts, one held at Cooperative Bank and the other at Equity Bank," Analo stated.
In addition to that, the county stated that daily revenue collections are sent to the CountyRevenue Fund (CRF) account held in the Central Bank of Kenya(CBK).
The MCAs claimed that it is not clear how many bank accounts are linked with the revenue collection system.
They alleged that there is currently no valid contract between Nairobi City County and Nairobi Revenue Services (NRS) as the principal collector as they emerged before the end of the Nairobi Metropolitan Service term.
"When the Nairobi Metropolitan term expired (NMS), all functions ought to have been reversed to the County Government, yet very suspicions, there are concerns or sub-contraction of revenue collection by KRA then to Nairobi Revenue System in unclear and un-procedural way," reads the statement.
The MCAs also claimed there has never been a complete audit of all revenue systems deployed in Nairobi City County since the advent of devolution to provide the accountability the public needs on this key infrastructure.