Nyoro defends his services delivery unit
Kiambu Governor James Nyoro has accused what he called corrupt external and internal cartels of discrediting his County Service Delivery Unit after it successfully sealed off all the loopholes they used to loot his administration.
He said that the cabal of 'thieves' had entrenched itself quarries, slaughter houses and motor vehicle parking departments where they irregularly pocketed millions of shillings daily.
The governor warned that the culprits will face the full force of the law noting that those already implicated were waiting for their days in court.
He said that the delivery unit which is headed by Engineer John Mugwe has in the last few months helped improve revenue collection in the country from a paltry Kes 19 million in a week to close to Kes 60 million a week.
'The tremendous growth in revenue collection has been achieved through sealing loopholes and elimination of cartels in quarries and in vehicle parking among others, much to the chagrin of the cartels who are now fighting back by denting the image of the team leader,', he told the media in Limuru yesterday
Nyoro praised Mugwe for his efforts in ensuring corruption is eliminated in the county’s revenue collection.
He accused beneficiaries of corruption of using some political brokers and bloggers from Limuru to hurl abuses towards Mugwe and termed them ‘agents of corruption’.
“Mugwe is in charge of service delivery in the county. When we came in (as a government), we found that a lot money collected from individuals and businesses was being stolen. But after discussing this with Mugwe and sending him out there, we have been able to collect Kes 58, Kes 55 and Kes 59 million in three consecutive weeks.
He said that this compares poorly with the Kes 19 that was collected before he took over from Ferdinand Waititu who is currently fighting corruption related cases in court.
The governor noted that Mugwe’s efforts in ensuring zero tolerance to corruption had borne fruit and the county can now use the revenue collected to repair roads and provide other services to the residents of Kiambu.
“They are calling Mugwe names because he has blocked their corruption avenues, but by saving the county more than Kes 30 million in a week,' he said.
Nyoro said that the 'saved' cash he enabled the county to do many kilometers of roads and provide essential services including buying PPEs for health workers as well as giving them allowances
Contacted, Mugwe said that his department has fought off cartels that used to levy money and put it in their own pockets.
“We have caused substantial improvement of parking fees collection and an example is Kiambu town where only Kes 30,000 used to be collected in a day. Now we are collecting over Kes 95,000”, he said.
This he said had been achieved through “following money to the bank” and by implementing the cashless payment method thereby ensuring that no employee handles any cash.
He commended the governor for strengthening the revenue department by detaching it from Finance and hiring a Revenue Chief Officer to be in charge.
Governor Nyoro vowed that going forward, no one would be allowed to steal money from Kiambu, “even if they take fake documents to the EACC or DCI to distract us.
'Let them do whatever they will, but we will protect money collected from our people and put it into good use”.
