This morning, I came across an interesting forum entry on popular site Wazua. The Nairobi County Government has recently sought to automate its operations to cut on corruptions and minimize leakages in revenues. The county partnered with Jambo Pay thereby launching Ejiji Pay, a solution aimed at allowing residents to make electronic payments for various services including Parking. For the longest time, paying for parking involved the tedious process of searching for attendants,who you would possibly not find and end up getting clamped. In other instances, one has to queue at the County Offices to pay the parking fees. The solution was thus a big boon for residents.
However, based on the Wazua forum entry, seems like it did not take long to game the system. In a post called ” Kidero Parking Scam- True Story ” one explained how parking attendants may be colluding with a few guys with the knowledge of the system and milking City’s coffers. The user was approached by a County employee offering to renew his seasonal parking ticket with payments made to her via cash of M-pesa. The user then agreed but on condition they receive confirmation message from JamboPay on dialing *217#. The user then opts to pay for the day’s parking to avoid getting clamped. A few hours later, the employee calls the user and tells them to check their payment status and sure enough, he has a seasonal payment ticket expiring in a month’s time.
Interestingly, the user decided to check the transaction history for the last payment, which was the 300/= daily parking charge made earlier. The transaction receipt for the “5,000/=” paid with the help of the County employee was the same number as the one used to make the daily payment. Looks like Ejiji Pay could do so much!
See the story: Kidero Parking Scam- True Story
