Nyamira County back to manual tax collection

Nyamira County has reverted to manual collection of taxes after the automated system was pulled down following contractual disagreement with the service provider.

Withdrawal of the system means tax collectors will revert to the former system of receipts which was prone to embezzlement of cash. Before automation, numerous cases of fake tax receipts and allegation of cartels siphoning county revenues were common, something likely to happen again. Revenue collectors have been using manually generated revenue receipts which have previously been subject to questionable accountability with allegations of fraud leading to automation.

The automated tax collection system was launched by governor Amos Nyaribo less than a year ago. A source from the department of revenue collection confided to The Standard that the service provider for the tax collection system had not been paid and the company had stopped the service.

Efforts to reach Finance Executive Emily Ongaga and her Chief Officer Dominic Barare were futile. Nyaribo had during the launch of the automated collection system, promised to triple the devolved unit's revenue. Before automation, the county used to collect between Sh90m and Sh180m.