Long queues at City Hall despite new service centre

Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja recently inaugurated the Customer Service Centre at the City Hall Annex, where county services are accessed.

Service delivery

The inauguration of the centre came after the building was renovated to improve service delivery.
 
However, two weeks later, frequent system failures have led to delays in service delivery, resulting in long queues outside the centre.
 
While access to information has been successfully achieved, the time wasted by customers waiting for these services is a key challenge for Governor Sakaja's administration.
 
One of the clients who has been camping at the centre for the past three days is Margaret, who is trying to get her house rates cleared.

Nairobi Revenue System

Her problem started with the county's revenue system- the Nairobi Revenue System (NRS), which failed to reflect her payment details to the devolved unit accounts.
 
The system shows that she has not paid rates for her two houses for the last two months, totalling Sh90,000, including penalties.
 
“I came here the first day and they took me through the process but the system failed midway, and I was asked to return the following day. It is now my third day here following up on this issue,” Margaret said.
 
Despite queuing for hours on the third day, Margaret has been told to go and wait for a word from the county, but her fear is the penalty that keeps piling up because of the error in the system.
 
She has been carrying her four bank slips for the past month, which clearly shows that she has been depositing her dues.
 
Naomi Faith Nyambura is another customer who has been queuing for hours, forcing her to close her shop for the second day, just to confirm with the administration how much she should pay the county for her shop.
 
“I only want to know how much I am supposed to pay, but that has kept me waiting here since 9am,” Nyambura said.
 
She tried to access the service by phone, but the system was inaccessible, so she had to come in person.
 
Her frustration was echoed by her colleague, who said she was sent back last week when the system failed and asked to come back the next day, only to face the same scenario.
 
The County admitted that there was a problem with the system, which they promised to improve as they continue to learn from some of the challenges that are emerging.

Citizen engagement 

The County's Chief Officer for Public Participation, Citizen Engagement and Customer Service, Ms Lydia Mathia, said that they serve close to 1,500 customers a day, and that whenever there is a delay in the system, the queues become very long.
 
She says that the chaotic situation is also attributed to the last-minute rush to beat the waiver deadline, which was extended to January 31. 
 
“When you are giving such kind of services, you will probably have a backlog. But we are not overwhelmed, we can serve all the people who are coming here except that on some days, we have a challenge, either the system has crashed, our service providers have an issue within or there are too many people within the system at a time,” Ms Mathia said.
 
The county official points out that some of the customers appear without full documents or details of their businesses, and whenever they are asked to go back and collect their details, they express their frustrations.
 
The county government has encouraged its customers to embrace self-service through the online platform, which will reduce the numbers at the centre.