Economy

eJijiPay hitch hands motorists free parking

jiji

A motorist pays his parking fee. PHOTO | FILE

Motorists parked their vehicles in Nairobi for free on Thursday after the digital revenue collection system collapsed, leaving City Hall with an estimated Sh2 million financial loss.

The online fees collection system, dubbed eJijiPay and run by financial vendor JamboPay, was not operational for most of the day, leaving parking attendants with little to do because the county migrated from the manual platform last December.

Car owners pay Sh300 per day as parking fees.

“The system is down this morning and our technical team is working on it. We expect it to be up and running,” JamboPay said in response to queries from the Business Daily.

The vendor would not specify what caused the breakdown and why its redundancy plan was not working.

“Once the systems are back, motorists will be given an allowance of one hour to make payment after which clamping will begin.”

eJijiPay is also used to make other payments like rent, single business permits, planning fees, rent and seasonal parking, all of which remained unavailable on Thursday.

READ: JamboPay signs up agents to sell Nairobi e-parking tickets

The system collapse comes as JamboPay is looking to take over more revenue collection responsibilities for the county government.

Currently, it collects about 30 per cent of the county’s total revenues. In the fiscal year that ended last month, the company collected Sh3 billion for the county.

Other payments collected by the county amounted to Sh7.6 billion. JamboPay chief executive Danson Muchemi said if all revenue is channelled through the company, there would be a 30 per cent improvement.

“There are still significant opportunities to further increase revenues through streamlining of revenue collections on land rates and housing rentals,” he said.

“If revenue growth in these areas approximated average growth in areas currently benefiting from JamboPay (plus 30 per cent), this could translate to an incremental Sh2.1 billion in revenues.”

JamboPay was introduced last year to reduce graft associated with revenue collection – especially from parking fees – by reducing the amount of money directly handled by county officials.