By Anderson Ojwang’
In a bold statement, the County Assembly of Kisumu, during a report presentation by an adhoc committee, said the county revenue system was a heist.
The County Assembly of Kisumu had formed an adhoc committee to investigate why Kisumu County had failed to meet revenue collection targets despite the huge potential.
Bill Olive Odhiambo, Kobura Ward MCA, Independent, said the Kisumu County revenue system was designed to enable stealing, where one takes away what they want.
He said the Kisumu County revenue system is a real heist, where one steals what they can, a conduit for embezzling funds from its coffers.
“Our system is designed for stealing. If you look at the components that are there, one system is money collected through the web system. The other system is money collected through M-Pesa and lastly the USSD one, which is a deliberate thing so that money can be stolen. It doesn’t go through the system so that any USSD payment in Kisumu County, you can see it at the bank but you cannot see it through the system. Meaning in the evening, when revenue collection has been done and reconciliation is being undertaken, that is where they look at how much they want to submit and how much they want to take away,” he said during the report presentation at the assembly.
Olive said they were initially informed that the revenue system the county was using was developed by Safaricom, which is not the true situation.
“We have a system that we were told was developed by Safaricom, but our realization is that a company called Rebtek developed the system and they are using Safaricom to render the services,” he said.
Through their investigations, they established that Safaricom and the company differed over some money which was withdrawn.
“From our investigations, we established that there was disagreement between Safaricom and the company because some money was withdrawn, and until now we don’t know how much was lost. We can only say Safaricom and Rebtek disagreed,” he said.
He said the county was paying a group that was formed to oversee the county revenue board, which was dissolved a year ago.
“We went ahead as a county and had a revenue board. Now we have a new group. There is another group monitoring the revenue board, which is in non-existence,” he said.
Olive said Kisumu County Governor Anyang Nyong’o was not passionate about revenue collection compared to other counties they visited to benchmark.
He said Kisumu County has one of the best manifestos to realize development for the people, but there is zero implementation.
“We have a good manifesto for our people, but when it comes to implementation, it is about who will take what and who will go with what,” he said.
Olive said during their benchmark in Kiambu County, they felt ashamed when they witnessed a real-time working revenue system.
“We were ashamed. Kiambu County showed us their collections online, with no point where a revenue collector interacts with money. For that day, the revenue collection stood at Sh14M by midday. Their collection is per second, per minute. After 20 minutes, the collection had shot up from Sh14M to Sh20M. In Kisumu, we talk of revenue per day. Disappointing,” he said.
He said for Kisumu County to grow, there was a need for a complete overhaul to realize development.
In an earlier exposé by Western Insight had raised concern over the procurement of the automated and integrated revenue management system.
Some of the questions that sought answers from both the board and the county government included:
What was in the contract CGK/FIN/PROC AWD/Vol/1 for automated and integrated revenue management system for the financial year 2023/24 and was it honored?
Why did the Revenue Board purchase 400 Android phones instead of 400 POS that was contracted, and it is alleged that at the time of inspection only 350 Android phones were delivered and 350 SIM cards?
Why was due diligence not carried out during the time of contract award after three bidders, namely Safaricom PLC, Webtribe Ltd and Craft Silicon Ltd, tendered?
Did Safaricom PLC provide the performance security bond during tender signing on 29/9/2023? Ref contact number CGK/FIN/PROC/AwD/Vol 1/1
Did Safaricom PLC sign the service level agreement (SLA) and annual maintenance contract (AMC)?
Is it true that citizen access channels via WhatsApp are not integrated in the system yet it was provided for in the contract, and why?
Who did the feasibility study and who approved the design and who oversaw the control of the design?
Where is the report of the study and did the system that was acquired fill the gaps that were in the previous one?
Have the internal auditors been able to log in and monitor transactions? Do they have the login rights and receive reports and credentials?
Is it true that the seven instructed revenue streams are not defined and cannot be accounted for, yet the contract was for full integration?
If the county government paid KSh 60M for this tender, did it get value for money?
In an exposé by Western Insight Newspaper, it was revealed that a section of the employees at the board who became whistleblowers brought to the county leadership what they termed as “blatant corruption” at the facility.
The employees who spoke anonymously claimed they had noticed variance between the actual collection and reconciliation.
“We have been raising transactions and system queries on a daily basis with the board of directors, but there was no action taken. We therefore decided to pass the coded message to the Governor and his team to act. We are happy something is being done,” said one of the employees at the board who did not want to be quoted.
They claimed the actual financial reports and reconciliations were not adding up, and that is why each employee declined to sign the reports because they were not reflective of the actual revenue collection position.
