Office of the Town Clerk

It is my pleasure to welcome you to City Council of Nairobi’s revamped website. It is our goal to keep you informed and up to date with the activities in the Town and all that we have to offer. Whether you're looking for information to enable you get better services, transact business, information for your new or expanding business or to aid your upcoming visit in Nairobi, you will find it online.

One of the priorities for Council is to comprehensively review and update the way City Hall communicates to the Nairobians it is meant to serve. It is the blueprint for the enhancement of our key reform principle – create a people first oriented administration - for planning where and how our Nairobian community will grow through Vision 2030 and beyond. It is our goal to be a sustainable community that is built and supported by the entire infrastructure and will provide current and future residents with a high quality of life.

Indeed, the Council has moved away from an era where the Council was masked under the cover of vagueness, to an era where all our operations are transparent. One of the answers to this process was enhancement of the use of ICT to improve administrative processes.

Among the website’s new features is the introduction of e-payment by the council to speed up transaction speeds and accountability while the newly introduced Customer Service Contact Centre will ease tracking of your dealings with the council. This follows the precedent setting launch of the web-based approval of construction permits on 28th September 2011 by the council to cap a revolutionary transformation of how the City Council of Nairobi conducted the process of building plans approvals. Up to two years ago, the City Planning Department epitomized all that was wrong with City Council of Nairobi. Not anymore. Architects and developers have gained from improved speeds of permit issuance, increased transparency, profiling of architects and enhanced public safety. On the other hand the Council has benefitted from increased efficiency and easier monitoring and enforcement.

I am glad to say that all these efforts have paid dividends as the City Planning department has transformed from being among the worst and most corrupt planning departments in Africa, to being number 35 globally and being 1st in Sub- Saharan Africa in the “World Bank Global Doing Business 2011 Report”.

For the past two and a half years, a reform minded administration at City Hall decade, has led the administration reworking its priorities in line with expanding the reach of government positively. During this period, Nairobians and the Council have had to be candid about the challenges our city is aggressively attempting to overcome as our population has increased alongside the pressure to deliver services with moderate taxation.

There is a local proverb here in Kenya that says: “The Earth was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children.” My team at City Hall have improved that saying to also mean “Nairobi was not given to us by our parents. It has been loaned to us by our children”.

This proverb is a driving force behind our efforts over the two years – to create a comprehensive plan in the important the key areas of Education, Health and Infrastructure for a brighter, healthier, more economically prosperous Nairobi. A Nairobi that we want to “return” to our children, as magnificent as it can be. To achieve that we need to reform the way we conduct business.

Reform isn't just about restoring systems and being on time. It is about creating systems that care about people. Nairobi is not made up of building and roads. It is made up of people. Hardworking people and families who work daily to make the best of what they have. They needed a system that can work. However, we couldn’t do this while choking under old debts and carrying on with systems that don’t work. Our task was so clear. We needed to stop debating reforms and to start dealing with them.

My number one priority as the Town Clerk has been fiscal responsibility. Achieving this during a tight economy requires a willingness to make tough decisions.

When I arrived at City Hall, the city was facing a KSh 30 billion gap of debt which stressed the anticipated spending and available revenues. Systems were loose, corruption was rampant. In a “new historical chapter” City Hall cleared more debts totaling more than KSHs 4 billion shillings in the last 22 months among them 3 billion shillings owed to statutory bodies, Debts with our bankers were restructured from KShs 1.4 billion to KShs 400 million while the Council also negotiated bank interest downwards from a high of 17% to 14% We also renegotiated for waiver of interest and penalties owed to LAPFUND (from 1.3 billion to 700 million).

So far we have been able to clean up our payroll in our Human resource review making it one of the best in the public service, So far we have placed on course the development of the City Master plan and beginning December 2011, Nairobians can pay for services online through an -payment platform for all council services that will be launched.

After a thorough review of our strategic plan up to 2012 we aligned it to business plans, budget and procurement plan. We managed to cleared retiree dues which were pending from the year 2005 by paying out about KShs 300 million shillings, Launched fuel cards enabling the council to make savings of about 100 million shillings per year. Garbage collection is being done round the clock and council has extended 24 hour collection services to residential areas. Revamping of the fire department has improved our previously dire capacity to manage fire outbreaks. Cash flow management has ensured non existence of bouncing cheques. Massive cost savings have been achieved by streamlining purchases through procurement as per the Procurement Act.

Through a combination of operational consolidations, expenditure reductions, personnel cutbacks and a freeze on new bureaucratic employment, cost of service increases and elimination of wasteful employee overtime payments, we have been able to reduce that fiscal gap substantively.

As we continue with the process of creating a Nairobi that works better, the ongoing involvement of our Nairobi and its friends will be imperative. The commitment that’s already been made by Nairobians to support the reform agenda has been invaluable, and this we need your continued partnership and support going forward and especially now that in 12 months, Nairobi’s Local Authority will be transformed into a country government in line with the new constitution. It’s not that we need more regulation or less regulation – it’s that we need smarter regulation – regulation based on what government can effectively do today, not what government has been doing for decades.

To do that, we must face the truth. It is time to take on the challenges that threaten the very future of our city: the quality of our schools and hospitals, the sacredness of public utilities and property, the safety of our brother and sisters in informal settlements, the cost and effectiveness of city government, and the urgent need to create and maintain an open administration oriented to a “people first” mentality.

In the coming month, we’ll launch online forums where every City employee – and every Nairobian – can post ideas that he or she thinks will improve services or save the City money. Others will be able to comment on those proposals, and then we’ll implement the best ones.

These are exciting times for our City and Council is committed to embracing these changes to ensure our citizens are proud to call Nairobi their home.

Thank you.

Philip Kisia
Town Clerk of Nairobi

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