By Antynet Ford
Adhoc committee on the decline of revenue in Nairobi City County has questioned the secondment of nine officials from the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).
The nine include; Anastacia Wanjiku Githuba, Sylvester Okello, Leonard Otieno, Andrew Wamae, James Kumba, John Muhunyo, George Thuo, Francis Oluoch, and Benard Ngugi.
In a letter dated January 4th, 2023 the County Boss, Johnson Sakaja requested the secondment of the officers to help in the transition for a period of two years subject to renewal.
The letter to the then KRA Commissioner Githi Mburu by Sakaja indicated that the officers were to support own source and revenue collection together with the rollout of the Nairobi Revenue Authority (NRA) which received allocation in the financial year 2023/24 and would be rolled out soon as indicated by Kerich.
“Following the expiry of KRA as the principal collector of Nairobi City County on September 5th, 2022 officers have been identified to help continued offering knowledge transfer to Nairobi in development, rollout and management of the integrated county management system (Nairobi Pay), coordination of county revenue administration, collection and operations, policy and legislative reforms in revenue administration and collection.
With the county seeking to operationalize Nairobi City County Revenue administration Authority as a Corporate with key functions of collecting receiving and accounting for revenue on behalf of NCCG.
In line of the above and in support of the national government to county government NCCA has identified Anastacia Wanjiku Githuba, Sylvester Okello, Leonard Otieno, Andrew Wamae, James Kumba, John Muhunyo, George Thuo, Francis Oluoch, and Benard Ngugi from your institution based on competence, knowledge and skills to be attached to Nairobi.” The letter stated in part.
Acting County Secretary Patrick Analo explained that governor Sakaja chose the nine KRA officials only after looking at their capabilities and concluded their skills would come in handy for the county of Nairobi.
“These people used to work during the NMS tenure and he might have gone through the qualifications and settled on them.” Analo explained.
Analo was responding to MCA Matara who wanted to know the rationale Governor Sakaja used to settle on the nine.
Throwing a hard pressing question to both Kenya Revenue Authority and Executive officials, Majority leader Peter Imwatok questioned whether the two institutions had a framework to guide their new engagements.
Both the County Secretary Analo and Silvester Okello confessed to having no existing framework.
Okello revealed that KRA had come up with a proposed framework which was forwarded to the County government for approval.
“The framework needed further consultation therefore at the moment we are operating without a framework.” he added.
However, CEC Finance Charles Kerich stated that a memorandum of understanding will be soon put in place for them to work with the national collector as per the letter by governor Sakaja.
The committee also heard that the seconded KRA officers were not being paid by City Hall.
CEC for Finance Charles Kerich highlighted that no payment could be done without a framework.
“Upto date we have not processed any payment because we have no legally binding document to make us pay them.” He said.
It’s still puzzling that no official from KRA and the County executive has access to the Nairobi Revenue System upto date since the start of the investigations which will be completed next week with the committee tabling the report.
Benson Njoroge a contact person at the ICT ministry and officers from the State Departments of ICT and Digital Economy have still failed to respond to the summons and the committee chair has directed for individual summoning.
The Internal Security and National Administration replied to the summons in a letter saying they were looking for information on how the system was developed. committee.