Nairobi Revenue Service, a system used by Nairobi county to collect revenue is controlled by a mysterious man, Chief Officer Tirus Wainaina has said.
He said the man, only known to him as Njoroge, is the system developer behind NRS.
More shocking, is that no one from Governor Johnson Sakaja's administration has ever met Njoroge since they assumed power last year.
Wainaina made the revelation during an ad hoc committee session chaired by Majority Leader Peter Imwatok.
The committee was tasked to investigate the unexplained drop in revenue collection despite the presence of NRS.
He said he had only communicated with Njoroge through the ICT ministry.
“When we want to contact NRS or when the system is down, we formally contact ICT ministry to rectify the issue. The ministry gave us Njoroge's contacts for inquiries,” he said.
“I do not want to confirm whether he is an employee there or not; all I know is that he has the knowledge of the system."
Wanaina said this in response to Imwatok's question on where NRS offices are located.
The chief officer said his mode of communication with Njoroge was via email or phone call.
NRS was introduced to Nairobi county by the Kenya Revenue Authority during the tenure of the now-defunct Nairobi Metropolitan Services.
NMS tenure expired in March 2022 but was extended for a further six months to September 2022.
After the expiry of the term of service in September, the taxman handed over the revenue collection function to Nairobi government.
However, KRA continued to collect revenue on behalf of the county.
In his defense, Finance executive Charles Kerich said the county only relied on NRS for the provision of proof of payment.
He said the platform does not handle the county's daily revenue collection.
“There is a notion that revenue collected by the county is remitted to NRS, which is not true. The case is that the NRS system is a platform used to generate invoices and receipts. It then updates to show that you have paid your dues," he said
"The money is banked into Nairobi county's accounts at Equity and Cooperative banks. No money goes to NRS."
The Finance boss said the county is in the process of developing its own revenue collection system.
The 13-member ad hoc committee has 60 days to table its report before the Nairobi county assembly.
Nairobi has not met its revenue targets since 2013.
Records from the county show that in financial year 2017-18, Sh10.17 billion was collected against a target of Sh17.23 billion.
City Hall was set to raise Sh19.57 billion in 2016-17 but only collected Sh10.93 billion.
The highest amount ever collected was Sh11.71 billion in 2015-16, which was still far short of the Sh15.3 billion target.
In financial year 2014-15, Sh11.6 billion was collected against a revised budget of Sh13.2 billion, while in 2013-14, Sh9.33 billion was realised against a target of Sh12.13 billion.
The six key own-source revenue streams include, parking fees, rates, single business permits, house rents and building permits.
This is in addition to billboards and adverts, which account to close to 80 per cent of the county’s annual own-source revenue.
More than 136 revenue streams of the county have been digitised.
