Editorials

EDITORIAL: Address City Hall woes

kerich

Nairobi county ICT executive Charles Kerich. FILE PHOTO | NMG

The new administration at City Hall promised to dramatically improve services to Nairobi residents during the election campaigns last year.

Understandably, Governor Mike Sonko’s team needs more time and resources to deliver on the more ambitious campaign pledges such as building multi-storey car parks and upgrading slums.

But an assessment of the administration’s performance in the first five months suggests that the team, like its predecessor, is struggling to improve even the very basic services.
Garbage collection remains as big a problem in the capital city under Mr Sonko as it was under Evans Kidero, if not bigger.

Worse, City Hall is beginning to undermine its own revenue collection efforts as well. On Wednesday, many people and businesses were unable to make payments for land rates and permits or verify cheque payments at City Hall after Safaricom disconnected Internet services over a Sh3.2 million unpaid bill.

Although ICT chief executive Charles Kerich sought to play down the magnitude of the problem, saying connection was restored after two hours, long queues observed at the Nairobi county government headquarters till evening indicated a big inconvenience to residents.

Coming in the wake of reports of internal leadership wrangles over tenders, the service failures at City Hall speak of an administration that has misplaced priorities.