The Chairperson of the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA), CPA Mary Chebukati Wanyonyi, has lauded the County administration of Uasin Gishu for coming up with a reliable and efficient system that has facilitated easy own-source revenue collection across various sectors in the county.
Speaking in an interview with the press when she toured the County Service Centre, Eldoret, together with Uasin Gishu governor Dr. Jonathan Bii Chelilim and his Turkana counterpart Jeremiah Lomorukai, the CRA Chairperson affirmed that the innovation is a significant step to ensure citizens get access to services easily.
“This is something unique; everything has now been so simplified. we have just witnessed how you can walk into a service centre to access up to 14 county services, from land rates to business permits and others and within a minute, you have been served and paid for whatever services you require just at one desk,” she said.
She urged other county governments to emulate the example of Uasin Gishu, noting that the Commission is keen to support the counties specifically to assist in ensuring that their own source revenue is collected as per the target.
The CRA Chairperson indicated that the reason why pending bills occur is just because targets are set too high and then the revenue is not collected as required from various sources, leading to huge bills, which even cause suffering to many suppliers as they risk their assets being auctioned.
CPA Chebukati alluded that the exercise they are doing on revenue mapping is very important to ensure counties are able to collect and map their revenue accordingly.
The exercise is done with the support of the World Bank under The Second Kenya Devolution Support Program (KDSP II).
“We are pleading to the county governments to take their own-source revenue seriously and governors to continue supporting their institutions to ensure their own source revenue is collected in a good way,” added the CRA Chairperson.
She affirmed that the citizens were happy with the County Service Centre services as they are able to visit the centre for any service they need and in a very short time they are done as they return home to attend to other tasks.
Uasin Gishu Governor Chelilim pointed out that the service centre has come at a time it is needed most in terms of meeting its own source revenue target.
“We are coming up with an innovation where a client seeking the county services, with 14 county services onboarded, will access all the services from one desk, one stop desk, not one stop shop. You will get your services from land rates, motorbike stickers and many more within a very short time,” noted the governor.
He reiterated his administration’s commitment to serving the people and the business community, noting that the payment system Sisibo Pay has been successful and has attracted people to benchmark in the county to learn how to fast-track payments for various services.
“As a county we are way ahead and wish that other counties will emulate the same in order to bolster our own source revenue,” added Dr. Chelilim.
He revealed that the county has done better in terms of its own source revenue collection, noting that last year they achieved a target of Sh1.4 billion.
He said this year they are doing a Sh1.3 billion revenue target, which they are now inching close to meeting as approximately Sh 950 million has already been collected and hopefully at the end of this financial year they will have made the target.
On his part, Governor Lomorukai lauded the initiative by Uasin Gishu on the county service centre as he promised to send his officers to benchmark and borrow the idea in order to be implemented in Turkana to boost its own source revenue collection.
By Ekuwam Sylvester
