Counties

Monthly parking rates now costlier in Nairobi

ngina

Mama Ngina Drive Park in Mombasa that is being revamped. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Monthly parking tickets in Nairobi have become costlier than daily charges that were Monday reduced by a third to Sh200.

City Hall left the seasonal ticket charges unchanged, meaning it is now cheaper to pay the daily fee over the month compared to the one-off monthly charge.

For daily rates, a saloon car will cost Sh4200 for daily payment, against the one-off ticket of Sh5,000.

Motorists have been paying Sh300 daily for parking, charges were paying an equivalent Sh6,300 a month, making the season tickets cheaper.

“We started with on-street parking as the first step. We will progressively check on the seasonal tickets if we see that the new charges for daily charges have reduced collusions,” chairman of the County Budget and Appropriations Committee Robert Mbatia told Business Daily.

The seasonal parking fees do not change depending on whether a motorist opts to pay for a month, three months, six months or annually.

Public Service vehicles pay between Sh8,000 and Sh10,000 monthly while lorries pay as high as Sh20,000.

City Hall has about 12,000 parking slots.

City Hall slashed charges for daily fees by Sh100 in a move meant to increase compliance from motorists who colluded with some parking attendants to pay Sh150.

The county government however took more than a month to adopt the new charges, saying that the government printer took too long to provide documentation to the online payments company.

Mike Sonko, the governor, last year sought to increase the parking fees to Sh400 aiming to reduce congestion but the county assembly members shot it down to Sh200 in November.

City Hall directed Webtribe to configure the new charges nearly a month after Mr Sonko signed the law.

The new charges are set to hurt income from City Hall’s biggest source of revenue that accounted for 18.6 per cent of its Sh10.1 billion raise in the year ended June.

City Hall has struggled to raise revenues needed to upgrade roads and clear garbage in a county where salaries and allowances gobble more 60 per cent of its total income.

Nairobi Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said in May last year that City Hall loses at least Sh1.2 billion in revenues un-accounted for fees on clamped vehicles and corrupt parking attendants.