Top City Hall transport officials were on Tuesday unable to explain to the Budget and Appropriations Assembly Committee why the county discontinued online revenue collections for Matatu Sacco’s seasonal parking fee.
According to the committee, the action was in breach of the contract between City Hall and JamboPay - the firm contracted to provide online revenue collection platform for business permits, rate charges and parking fees.
The order to matatu saccos was issued on December 24, 2018, by Parking Director Tom Tinega.
Tinega ordered the 397 matatu saccos in Nairobi to stop paying for the lucrative seasonal parking ticket through Jambo Pay and instead revert to banking the funds directly to county bank accounts.
But the committee led by Robert Mbatia put Tinega to task and demanded to know why the digitised process was halted without involving Transport CEC Mohammed Dagane, acting county secretary Pauline Kahiga and Fredrick Karanja, Chief Officer for transport as required by law.
“We need to know why such a strong policy matter was initiated without the consent of the chief officer and the county secretary because it has now seen the county government lose millions in seasonal parking fees,” Mbatia asked.
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The members also demanded answers as to why both the county secretary and the acting director for parking services issued different notices on the same day over the matter.
Tinega in his defense
said the direction was given to stop fake payments made by matatu saccos and also make it easy for his department to reconcile payment records.
“We thought that we would be able to get all the data that we want and also be able to reconcile them in time. The county has never clearly understood how Jambopay agents generate receipts because they were not contracted by City Hall. We have had people fake payment receipts only for us to later find out that the money does not reflect on our systems," he explained.
He said the county was able to increase collections from seasonal tickets in the first month from Sh5 million to Sh17million in the second month.
His views were however dismissed by Embakasi MCA Michael Ogada, who noted that such figures could not be taken seriously without any supporting documents.
"We want to see the minutes of the meeting where it was decided on suspending our normal way of payment, who authorized the directive and how much was collected before and after implementation of the directive," Ogada said.
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