Muraguri: We’ll digitise all payments – Lands ministry
All services at the Lands ministry will soon be paid for through a digital system to enhance accountability.
Lands Principal Secretary Nicholas Muraguri said the ministry is set to stop all manual payment of fees and duties and adopt a digital revenue collection platform.
Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to respond to audit queries for the financial year 2016/17, he said the ministry did not launch the programme in July as expected due to hitches with systems in various banks.
The automation of payments is expected to weed out corruption as well as ensure the ministry is able to collect more revenue.
Among platforms intended for adoption in payment include M-Pesa as well direct bank deposits.
“What we are pushing for this year is going cashless and besides the E-citizen platform that people use to pay for services, we hope to launch our own revenue collection system. We are already working with the National Treasury to ensure this is successful,” he said.
Use brokers
Muraguri told MPs that failure to pay for one transaction will make it hard for the person to move to the next operation.
In the past, long queues and unending paperwork has discouraged people from following the processes at the lands registries opting for brokers who can complete searches and payments in a matter of hours.
“For example, if you don’t pay for stamp duty, you cannot go to the next stage, we are putting up a system that will automatically trigger the system once any person makes a payment,” he said.
His disclosure followed committee chairman Opiyo Wandayi’s concern over revenue collection at the ministry. Auditor General Edward Ouko has questioned why the ministry fell short of Sh2.9 billion projected revenue by only collecting Sh1.7 billion
