Kisumu County goes cashless in new revenue collection.

 County Executive Committee Member in charge of Finance Nerry Achar{R} and his Tourism Counterpart Achy Alai when they addressed the media in Kisumu yesterday on the issue of Cashless revenue collection system-Photo Courtesy.

By Dickson Odhiambo.

  July 6, 2018.

Kisumu County goes cashless in new revenue collection.

THE County Government of Kisumu has changed its revenue Collection system to a new one, County Executive Committee Member in charge of Finance Nerry Achar has said.

Achar says the new system takes effect from July 1 this year and has replaced the manual system of collecting revenue within Kisumu County as a whole.

He says under the new revenue Collection system, people will be required to use their mobile phones in paying taxes to the County Government of Kisumu.

Addressing the press in Kisumu, Achar said the new cashless system is being implemented by the Strathmore University while collaborating with Cooperative Bank of Kenya.

The Finance CEC says already an award letter has been issued to Strathmore University that has allowed it to implement the new system of collecting revenue in the entire County.

Achar says under the new system, the County Government will be able to collect between 5 to 7 billion shillings in a year as opposed to the current collection of shs 1 billion annually.

“The system is mobile based and traders will be using their phones to make payments and those without phones will be assisted by the supervisors who will also print receipts,” he says.

Achar adds that the new system has Geo Mapping system that ensures that traders have unique identification numbers for easy monitoring.

He adds that under the new system, the County Government will be able to make a monthly revenue collection of between about shs 300million plus as opposed to the current monthly collection of between shs 40 to 50 million.

“With the new system in place, the county will capture on areas we have not been covering like land rates and advertising thus our monthly collection cab be about shs 300million,” Achar adds.

However, the Finance CEC has said that with the introduction of the new system, there was a drop of about 50 percent in the revenue collection on Sunday when the new system kicked off.

He says that however, there was a drop to about 30 percent by Wednesday this week, adding that the drop might be as a result of normal technical hitches expected in any transition.

“The drop in revenue collection witnessed so far after the introduction of this new system last Sunday has been as a result of normal hiccups expected in any transition and I want to assure the public that the challenges are already being addressed by the service providers and we expect to recover from such losses once the system stabilizes,” Achar says.

The Finance CEC says Kisumu County will collect more revenue in respect to a recent research study that was conducted by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics which has indicated that Kisumu was only collecting revenue from a population of 40,000 despite having the potential of collecting from a population of 197,000.

The CEC Finance has clarified that no revenue collector has been laid off as a result of introducing the new system, adding that those who have been laid off have their contracts expired and have not been renewed upon expiry.

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