A vehicle clamped by Nairobi County officials on December 10, 2020, along Muindi Mbingu Street over failure to pay parking fees.
| Francis Nderitu | Nation Media GroupNairobi
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How Nairobi city askaris collude with parking boys to defraud motorists
Mr Hannington Chitechi is in the Nairobi City centre to run a few errands in the morning - including a trip to the bank. But his day is about to be ruined.
A gentleman's agreement between him and a parking attendant is about to take a frustrating turn.
He would have preferred to pay for parking for the short time he was in town. But the parking attendant arrives just as he is looking for a convenient parking space and convinces him to let him keep the car temporarily.
In this deal, Mr Chitechi is to give the amount of money he would have transferred to the city revenue collection account to the parking boys, who will in turn give the county askaris their share.
In fact, the parking boy points at a city parking fee revenue collection officer wearing a well-labelled yellow dust coat who seems to be monitoring the progress of the conversations from a distance.
As he hands his car keys to the parking boy, the smile on their faces indicates that all parties are happy with the arrangement.
He takes one last look at his car before entering the banking hall.
Fifteen minutes later, he got the shock of his life. The car was missing.
He looks around and spots the parking attendant, who tells him that the car has been clamped and towed away by the county inspectorate unit.
15 minutes
Within the first 15 minutes of parking, the Nairobi County Revenue Directorate says, motorists are usually sent text messages asking them to pay the parking fees to avoid penalties.
But Mr Chitechi did not receive any notification on his phone that his car had been towed.
What followed was a series of frustrations as he walked around the CBD trying to find the county askaris. He later found his car being towed towards a car yard.
County askaris at the car yard accused him of parking in the wrong place and not paying his parking fee.
He was asked to pay a Sh15,000 fine in cash to the askaris. This included the towing fee.
Before paying the fine, he asked if there was an official receipt or invoice. Instead, the askaris threatened to increase the amount.
After hours of negotiation, the askaris reduced the fee to Sh7,000, which he paid in cash.
Mr Chitechi wrote a complaint to the Nairobi County Assembly about his experience with the askaris. The assembly's transport committee later summoned the county executive to respond to this and many other complaints by city motorists.
But this is not an isolated incident. Several motorists have experienced the same ordeal in recent weeks. Motorists who spoke to Nation.Africa said they were surprised when their cars were towed while the parking payment system had failed.
Mr Peter Waruku said efforts to persuade the city traffic enforcement officers not to tow his car fell on deaf ears.
Instead, he was told to 'talk nicely' to one of the enforcement officers. He was asked for a bribe.
Frustrated motorists
Nation.Africa found that collusion between the parking boys and the enforcement officers in the CBD has frustrated motorists over parking charges.
One of the askaris, who admitted to working with the parking boys, confessed that they were in cahoots with the boys. A parking boy also confirmed the same.
"It is lucrative. Apart from showing someone their parking space, once you work with these enforcers, you get paid on commission. The more cars you report, the more they clamp and the more money they make from the car owner and the more you take home," said one of the parking boys.
But like a rat trap that catches the guilty as well as the innocent, Abbiud* was caught up in the ordeal. He too was in town shopping.
"I had made the payment using the USSD code," only to later notice something peculiar. Only Sh200 was supposed to be deducted for parking within the CBD. But more was deducted," he said.
His friend Mathew has also found himself in this situation.
"As a law-abiding Kenyan, I paid the parking fee before I even got out of my car," he said.
"While only Sh200 was supposed to be deducted, Sh2400 was deducted from my M-PESA account," he added.
He said he didn't notice the discrepancy until he had to pay for another service elsewhere. The two showed Nation.Africa their transactions.
Various online platforms revealed such cases.
One frustrated tweep said he had received a notice from Nairobi County that they intended to impound his car, yet he had driven out of the city. His car was parked near his house in the village when the notice came.
"Why can't Nairobi Parking Services send the parking notices with photos of the actual car and the date? I am a victim of the wrong parking fee message..." he tweeted on 11 March 2023.
@mtumtulivu, claimed to have received a message to pay for parking his car when he was in Maseno for a funeral.
"Nilitumiwa message ya parking eti Niko Eastleigh na saa hiyo I was in Maseno for a funeral. I wish wangepiga picha the car when sending you the payment message. Wanakula sana," he tweeted on the same day.
And Kipkirui, who goes by @kipkiru99272561 on Twitter, said he had been fined Sh2,000 for not paying parking fees yet he had not been in Nairobi.
“Dear Customer, KCS695A has been penalised KES 2000 for an unpaid parking fee. Pay via *647# to avoid further penalties. For enquiries call 0709014747. This is the message I received and I have never stepped in Nairobi,” he tweeted on 25th December 2022.
While some motorists have had the deductions made without their consent - and later labelled as fines - others have complained that they only realised the 'fines' when they paid the parking fees.
This, says Mathew, is a complex web of fraud that "comes in different forms.
The Nairobi City County government gets its huge share of the revenue from parking fees for the 12,000 parking spaces.
In a written response to questions from Nation.Africa, City Hall, through the County Director for Revenue Shaban Asman, said the Nairobi City County parking system is corruption-free because it is digitalised.
Parking attendants
“Parking fees are not effected by parking attendants or enforcers. All fees are determined by the system. The penalties are charged based on the compliance status of the car. All payments and penalty charges are digitised,” Mr Asman said.
Further, he said the county inherited and adopted the revenue collection system used by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) and renamed it NairobiPay, noting that parking revenue has continued to increase after KRA left.
"The actual collections for the months of January 2022 during KRA was Sh219.17 million compared to Sh269.89 million collected in January 2023 after KRA left. Similarly, Sh147.96M was collected in February 2022 during KRA and Sh183.94M was collected by the county revenue team after KRA left," it said in response to queries.
The Governor Johnson Sakaja-led administration has also opted to set daily targets for parking attendants to meet its parking fee targets.
"The projection (for the 2023/24 financial year) will be achieved by setting targets for all road attendants and enforcement officers for all 12 000 parking spaces," reads City Hall's fiscal strategy paper for 2023.
Affected motorists have complained of incorrect deductions when paying for parking despite being asked to pay as little as Sh200. The prompt asks for a deduction of Sh200 but ends up deducting more - sometimes as much as Sh2400.
However, Nairobi County Chief Officer for Mobility Boniface Nyamu, while appearing before the Transport Committee led by Umoja 1 Ward Representative Mark Mugambi, said motorists are only fined Sh2,000 if they fail to pay Sh200 within the first fifteen minutes.
"Immediately you park your car, it is queried and you are given fifteen minutes to pay. If you do not pay within that time, you will be fined Sh2,000. So what you pay is Sh2,200. In terms of what happens if you do not pay, it is the revenue sector that is responsible because they also have enforcement that will tow a car if you have not paid," Mr Nyamu told the committee.
The CEC for Mobility and Works, Patrick Mbogo, told the committee that there were problems with the parking system and that they were trying to address the issues.
