Meru County government, through its Revenue Board held a ceremony where top tax payers and collectors were awarded as a way of encouraging more business people to pay taxes.
Speaking during the awarding ceremony held at Kinoru Stadium, the County Deputy Governor Titus Ntuchiu lauded the Meru Business Community for making things easy for the Board and its workers, which has seen the total revenue collected increase by 12 per cent.
Ntuchiu said the county has been able to collect Sh435 million during the current financial year up from Sh389million recorded last year, despite the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the local businesses.
“We have not been able to meet our target, but I have no complaints with our people for they have done their best,” added the Deputy Governor, who also serves as the County Executive for Finance.
He expressed his gratitude to the revenue collectors for doing their work diligently without harassing members of the public, citing that over the last four years, he has not received any complaints against them.
Apart from the revenue collectors receiving county recognition awards, the Deputy Governor said the county administration would consider employing them on permanent terms, as part of the recognition of the good work they were doing.
At the same time, Ntuchiu moved to assure members of the business community that the government would create a conducive trading environment to ensure people reap maximum benefits from the revenue they pay.
“I want to assure you that as a devolved entity, we shall ensure that the resources that we collect from you and those from the national government will be prudently managed to benefit our people,” he said.
The deputy governor said they have already managed to pave all the major towns in the county, adding that they have also included 19 more markets for cabro-paving beginning January next year.
He challenged tax-evaders to learn from the awardees, mainly comprised of small-scale traders and start paying up in order to help the government deliver quality services to the people.
On his part, Meru Revenue Board Chairman Douglas Kailanya said they have put adequate measures in place to ensure enhance revenue collection, including automation of revenue collection, improving revenue administration and adoption of a go-to-market approach among others.
“We will fully implement more of these strategies to ensure we get more revenue collection and most importantly guard it against any form of pilferage,” Kailanya said.
By Dickson Mwiti and Brenda Gakii
