MBALE, July 23, 2024 – Mbale City authorities have introduced a digital system that will now be used to collect street parking fees.
The city officials told journalists that the analog mode of street parking payment has been phased out to increase local revenue collection and reduce the number of tax defaulters.
James Kutosi, Senior Communication Officer of Mbale City Council said that the electronic payment system comes at a time when the city needs more revenue to run its operations.
Kutosi made the remarks while handing over the tax collection contracts to different companies at Mount Elgon Hotel on Saturday.
“All owners of the vehicles who will be paying street parking fees will wire directly into the system. The machine will immediately issue out an electronic receipt for the client indicating that money has been paid to the Mbale City account,” added Kutosi.
He said previously city council has been collecting about Shs 14.5 million monthly from parking charges, although he said the amount collected should have been higher given the many vehicles that park on city streets daily.
He said some of the money collected has been ending up in the people’s pockets instead of being remitted to the city account.
Kutosi said that low tax collection in the city has affected operations in terms of service delivery, such as repairing Infrastructures among others.
Meanwhile, Matia Mubangisi, Managing Director Fuelless Limited, the company awarded a contract to facilitate the digital collection of street parking fees promised to raise Shs 30 million monthly for the city council, which would more than double the Shs 14mln reported to be collected monthly .
“I urge the public to embrace our technology and cooperate in paying taxes for street parking as a way of developing the city,” said Mubangisi.
On his part, Muhammed Wafuba, Managing Director of Medlid Contractors Limited, a company that was contracted to collect local service fees from hotels, lodges, and restaurants, and ground rate, urged the media and political leaders to sensitise the hotel owners about the advantages of paying taxes.
Harriet Kakai, Deputy Mayor of Mbale City said that in the last financial year of 2023/2024, they budgeted to collect Shs 5 billion in local revenue but they ended up collecting only Shs 1.8bln due to tax defaulters.
https://thecooperator.news/mbale-city-leaders-start-monitoring-of-pdm-progress/
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