City Hall Stands To Lose Ksh 100m Daily As Jambo Pay Exits On Sunday

Nairobi County Government may be forced to result into cash/manual collection method for its 136 revenues streams from Monday, April 8, 2019. This is after City Hall’s contract with Web Tribe Limited, the mother company of JamboPay – the county’s automated revenue services provider, expires on Sunday April 7.

The firm was contracted by the county government in 2014 to supply, implement and maintain an automated revenue collection and payments solution for a period of five years through its eJijiPay app.

This means that county residents will have no platform to pay levies such as parking, licences, single business permits, rates, food handling certificates, market rents, and billboards fees among other charges and will be forced to walk to city hall’s cash office to pay.

Web Tribe Limited’s Chief Executive Mr. Danson Muchemi has already written to City Hall informing the County’s administration that it will be shutting down its systems as from Sunday night “…. At that time, WebTribe (JamboPay) will be unable to carry out any transactions for the county. For the avoidance of doubt, all services including, but not limited to payments and enforcements, will be disabled after April 7, 2019,” read the letter in part.

In the letter, Mr. Muchemi regrets that despite writing and holding several meetings with the county, the county is non-committal to ensuring a smooth transition. “We appreciate that several meetings have been held to plan for the migration, but are worried that we shall not have adequate time to complete the migration before the deadline which is less than a week away,”.

In January this year, Jambo Pay had written to the county government informing that they will not seek to renew the contract citing political interference, mistrust and negative publicity. “We have continued receiving bad publicity from the county government despite the fact that we have been in business together for five years,” said Mr. Muchemi in a letter seen by Daily Nation.

In the January letter, Mr. Muchemi, said that they were ready to hand over its system to City Hall, ahead of the expiry of their contract while recommending the setting up of a joint transition team to oversee the handover which would take 14 days.

When he appeared before the County Assembly Energy and ICT Committee, Mr. Muchemi told the committee that there has been mistrust between them and City Hall, with accusations from the latter that they have been “stealing” from them.

“We have been accused of stealing money that belongs to the county. We have lost clients as a result of these accusations while some started to doubt our capability,” he said.

With only 2 days to the end of the contract, reliable sources indicate that the county government has not yet acquired its own Integrated City Revenue Management System (ICMS) as it had been planned. Also, City Hall has not yet communicated any hiring of other firm to offer the services.

However, acquiring its own ICMS will take the County six to 12 months, a longer period considering the transition period had earlier been pegged at three months.

These indications clearly show that the county government is staring a financial crisis and stands a chance to lose up to Sh 100 million daily should there not be another service provider for the ICMS.