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Car owners are still paying Sh300 to park in the city despite the law reducing the fee to Sh200.
The County Finance Bill 2018, which cuts the parking fee by Sh100, was signed into law by Governor Mike Sonko last Tuesday.
The MCAs approved the Finance Bill 2018 on December 4, thus reducing the charges. The ward representatives slashed the fees from Sh400, as proposed by the county treasury.
A check by the Star in the CBD and Westlands showed that motorists are still parting with Sh300 to park their cars in county-owned slots.
Most are unaware of the law change and continue paying higher fees.
“It has not been published anywhere. The county should have informed us. I have not seen anything like that on TV or in the newspaper,” motorist Tom Wachira said.
Car owner Boniface Juma said, “If that’s the case, then this is theft. The county needs to communicate because we are overburdened.”
County parking director Tom Tinega said it would take a while for lower fee to take effect because the county has to adjust its online systems to register Sh200.
WAITING FOR ICT
“There is a process so that we enter the changes into the system because we are not collecting manually,” he said.
“I do not have any power over the ICT department to dictate the period they would take for the programming,” he said.
But JamboPay — the online payment services company collecting revenue for the county — yesterday said City Hall has not instructed it to register the lower fees.
“We cannot effect any change unless we are instructed by the client. If that happens, we make the changes immediately,” chief executive Danson Muchemi said.
The capital has about 12,000 public parking slots. About 6,000 of them are reserved for government and private institutions. The county charges Sh200,000 annually for a reserved parking space
The remaining 6,000 slots are for daily parking.
According to Auditor General Edward Ouko’s 2016-17 report on county finances, Nairobi loses Sh300 million annually in parking fees because of weak enforcement and collusion between corrupt officials and motorists.
SH60 AN HOUR?
Former governor Evans Kidero had increased the fees to Sh300 from Sh140 in 2013. The county takes in about Sh2 million daily from parking.
Last month a report suggested that City Hall should introduce a Sh60 per hour fee in the CBD to increase revenue. The Parking Management Report, released by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, showed the county loses millions of shillings in revenue every year because of the ‘fixed’ fees.
It indicated that 19 per cent of all vehicles parked in the CBD do so for eight hours or more and occupy more than a half of all the available parking slots downtown.
This practice, the report says, denies other motorists spaces to park, costing the county revenue.
The problem can only be cured by introducing parking pricing, it said.
The report indicated that on average, a motorist takes 32 minutes searching for parking space in the city centre.
As things stand now, there’s no way of knowing when motorists will start paying Sh200. It looks as though it will be Sh300 for Christmas and probably New Year.
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