City Hall’s e-payment tender award above board, Auditor General told

The Nairobi County government has told the Auditor General that the award of the e-payment contract to Webtribe, to collect revenue on behalf of City Hall, was above board.

This is after Auditor General Edward Ouko questioned how the Sh23 million contract was awarded to Webtribe, which owns JamboPay. However, while responding to the audit queries, Nairobi County ICT Director Benter Ogot said that the county wanted to maximise on the technical ability of the system to deliver.

Ms Ogot said the county determined the evaluation criteria to award 80 per cent marks for technical responsiveness and 20 per cent for financial responsiveness.

“Procurement regulations demand that a procuring entity sticks to the criteria it had set before starting the tender process. It’s instructive to note that a number of the questions raised in your query were also raised by the tender committee,” she said.

The ICT director said before the county awarded the tender, it referred the evaluation of the tender to Public Procurement Oversight Authority - who did not raise issues of impropriety on the evaluation. Ogot said the tendering process was competitive and the most responsive bidder won. The county believes that though a complex technology might be expensive, it has the potential to yield higher returns to pay for itself and boost county coffers.

She said the JamboPay e-payment system provided value for money and had already brought in income, which exceeded the set target. Ogot said the county has received several awards for being ahead of the game in electronic payments.

Seasonal tickets

“The two systems which are wholly in JamboPay are seasonal tickets and single business permit. The overall county revenue collection went up by approximately Sh1.44 billion in the 2014-2015 financial year,” she said.

She said that the increment realised for them in 2014-2015 in comparison to 2013-2014 is approximately Sh225 million and Sh235 million for seasonal tickets and single business permits respectively.

“There is support for full audit trail. The vendor has also provided 24 hours real time access to their system via a dashboard through which the county can monitor revenue collection.

The system provided adheres to ICT best practices and can be audited as required,” Ogot said.