A motorist pays parking fees in Nairobi. Motorists have continued to shun the e-payment parking system. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
Jambopay Tuesday said 1,500 motorists used the cashless pay system against the available 13,000 parking slots within the city.
Motorists continued to shun the e-payment parking fee system introduced by City Hall on Monday to a slow start.
A spot-check by the Business Daily on Tuesday showed that most of the cars parked on Nairobi streets had tickets placed on their dashboards, indicating their drivers had made cash payments.
Service provider Jambopay’s staff went around showing motorists how to open and operate the e-payment accounts following complaints that City Hall had done little to educate them on how the system works.
On Monday, motorists were forced to use cash after the e-payment system failed on what Jambopay attributed to low data capacity. Jambopay on Tuesday said 1,500 motorists used the cashless pay system against the available 13,000 parking slots within the city.
“There was a challenge with the bandwidth, but that has since been changed. We increased it four times today to handle the traffic,” Conrad Siteyi, the project manager at Jambopay told the Business Daily.
Under the cashless system, motorists are first expected to open a virtual mobile account, either through mobile gadgets or desktop computers, which are then loaded with cash.
City dwellers can use the account to settle their parking, land rates and rent dues. Parking attendants are equipped with a wireless gadget to counter check cars whose parking fees have been paid.
“All I got was a flier with a set of instructions. But I feel that there should have been more information on the system,” said Jane Waithera, a motorist.
Following the e-payment snag, City Hall had to make a U-turn on the complete ban of cash payments for parking, opting for a parallel billing system.
Officials said they will set a new date to ban cash payment at the end of the week after reviewing the performance of the new system. City Hall has 80 parking attendants against the required 250.
Motorists are also faced with fewer parking agents who will load cash to the their mobile wallets. Currently, Co-operative bank agents are performing the function but City Hall has a target of 500 agents spread across diverse businesses.
Nairobi has been grappling with revenue losses due to a flawed collection system across all its revenue streams, a problem it hopes to cure with outsourcing of the service and automation.
A test-run of the cashless parking system on Haile Selassie Avenue last week showed a near doubling of revenues collected.
City Hall expects to collect Sh5 billion this year from parking, making it the biggest revenue earner for Nairobi. City Hall’s monthly wage bill is more than Sh1 billion and accounts for nearly half of the budget, leaving little for development.
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