Kenya is known for its pristine marine parks and non-comes more highly recommended than the Watamu Marine Park. However, for a period of about a year now, the biggest hurdle to Kenyan residents and tourists has been access. Today, the Germany Ambassador to Kenya, Sebastian Groth, was faced by the access nightmare that has become customary to everyone paying via eCitizen.
Mr. Groth took to his X account to lodge a public complaint saying, “I really like #Watamu marine park for a nice snorkeling tour. BUT: getting the ticket via eCitizen is more difficult than seeing the big fish,”
Luckily, due to Groth status in society, the cabinet secretary for Tourism and Wildlife Rebecca Miano, picked up on his complaint and promised swift action. Miano answered the ambassador by stating, “Happy Mazingira Day Amb. I will take up this to ensure the difficulty is resolved. Ecitizen is supposed to be efficient and speedy. Thank you for feedback,”
What the CS knows well is that Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has faced technical hitches since payments in all the parks and reserves were moved to eCitizen. KWS manages 34 parks and reserves in various parts of the country and, mostly on weekends and public holidays, there are huge delays in processing payments.
Crucial Public Services on eCitizen
The cashless payment mode was rolled out in August last year as part of the government’s plan to digitize all its services. Since then, e-Citizen has consolidated more than 19,000 government services and introduced a centralized digital payment system. One can pay via digital cards or via mobile money.
Unfortunately, many ordinary Kenyans who need the essential services such as healthcare are often faced by glitches to the platform. Chaos and confusion have been witnessed in many public offices as the disruptions cut across different sectors.
For example, in health facilities patients are forced to wait for hours to be served due to delays in the processing of their payments. In other instances, business have grinded to a complete halt as they can’t access permits or other services.
Earlier this year, the e-Citizen leadership indicated that 15,440 out of the 19,038 services offered by government have been fully on-boarded, with the remaining 3,598 partially on-boarded. This shows how critical the platform is to daily life in the country.
