The Embu county assembly has questioned the failure to automate county revenue collection, despite the provision of Sh90 million for the purpose.
The MCAs set the money aside to roll out an e-revenue platform last year.
Budget and Appropriation Committee chairman Harrison Mwaluko now says the use of receipts to collect revenue is a conduit to for massive revenue theft.
The Mwea ward said MCA that the Embu County Revenue Authority had been allocated an additional Sh10 million for salaries, allowances, operations and maintenance to enable it to meet the Sh900 million revenue targets for the current year.
He said that he will move a motion to disband ECRA if it will not meet the set revenue target.
Speaking at the chambers during the approval of John-Mark Kariuki Ngando as the ECRA chairman, Mwaluko cautioned the new appointee over ghost revenue collectors.
He said the frauds were being paid irregularly through the Equity Bank and have been questionably operating in the county for several years.
Mwaluko called on the new ECRA chairman to streamline the revenue collection sector.
The budget committee chair stressed on the need to eliminate ghost workers in the county government.
Efforts to rationalise revenue collection and seal corruption loopholes would result in nothing if monies meant for development projects would continue getting wasted, he said.
Mwaluko said that a physical headcount of county personnel must be conducted to eliminate the ghost employees.
Majority leader Michael Njeru said that the county assembly had set aside Sh30 million to construct offices for ECRA, separate from the county executive to uphold the taxman’s independence.
Njeru warned against political interference with the tax collector saying this would impede efforts to improve the county’s revenue collection.
He urged the county administration to consider recruiting additional enforcement officers to help in the execution of revenue remittance orders.
The MCA asked the ECRA leadership to be cautious of unscrupulous revenue collectors inherited from the defunct local authorities, saying some were masters of corruption.
Nominated MCA Elizabeth Kibai said the automation of revenue collection in Embu would effectively end the problem of revenue leakages to corrupt tax collectors.
She said she had witnessed e-revenue systems working in other counties and wondered why a similar platform could not be implemented to seal revenue loopholes.
(edited by O. Owino)
