The Kilifi County government is set to install a new revenue collection system to automate revenue collection and curb leakages.
The move will bring an end to a 15-year war between private company Rain Drops Limited and the county government over revenue collection, where the firm landed a contract to collect revenue on behalf of the county government.
Governor Gideon Mung’aro’s administration advertised a tender inviting bidders to design, supply, implement, test, commission, and maintain the Integrated Revenue Collection and Management Solutions.
The tender was open to bidders and was dated March 2023.
The county government abandoned the revenue collection system left behind by former Governor Amason Kingi, who is currently Speaker of the Senate. Mung’aro’s target was to collect Sh. 2.5 billion this financial year.
The governor also revamped the county inspectorate by equipping it with new vehicles and motorcycles for revenue collection.
In 2015, Kingi’s administration tried to terminate a Sh. 300 million revenue collection deal awarded to Rain Drops Limited, a move that attracted a legal battle that is still pending in court to date.
Kilifi North MP Owen Baya claimed in a letter of termination to the firm that the firm had failed to automate the revenue collection system as per the contract.
He had accused the firm of failing to erect weighbridges and automated systems for revenue collection and also failed to provide automated systems for parking fees. The letter attracted condemnation from the firm led by its CEO Shaib Hamisi Mgandi, who termed the move as illegal and against the law.
The company entered a 15-year revenue collection deal on two revenue streams that included cess and parking fees.
The company had erected five modern and automated weighbridges and was in the process of building seven others across the county.
It had also procured 200 sophisticated pay system gadgets that reflected real-time at the Kilifi Finance office and the Rain Drops limited computers once a client had paid for either cess or parking.
Mr. Kingi told journalists in 2016 that at the advent of devolution his administration inherited a very leaking revenue system due to manual revenue collection systems by five defunct local authorities.
He said that to curb leakages and ensure improved revenue collection earnings, the systems had to be automated, and the investment needed was heavy and expensive in terms of hardware and software. Rain Drops Company Limited was contracted to deal with the automation of Cess and parking streams.
Dashboards monitoring revenue collection in the two streams were mounted in selected County offices, and officers could monitor progress in real time.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has since launched investigations into various allegations of corruption in the county touching on revenue collection.
EACC Coast regional manager Ben Murei said that the tender was a scheme to misappropriate funds through the purchase of a system and payment of exorbitant commissions for revenue collected.
