Webmasters Kenya Limited, the firm behind the creation of the e-Citizen payment system has raised the alarm on underhand tactics meant at decapitating the execution of digital government payments.
According to James Ayugi, the Managing Director of Webmasters Kenya, there is clear sabotage from high ranking government officials who would love to see a return the now obsolete manual payment systems.
“The platform has disrupted the government’s procurement system. Individuals who use to get millions in contracts for the supply of papers in addition to their friends who benefited through kickbacks are some of the people fighting the system,” he said.
Further to the sabotage fears by Webmaster is the ongoing funding challenges at the firm as government remains behind on its settlement of convenience fees owed to the firm.
The cash-strapped entity has since had to let go a portion of its staffers with the consequences being an ineffective customer support system evidenced by recent public complains on the system’s outage.
The revelations by the Nairobi based firm arises on the back of allegations of losses accumulating to Ksh.5.6 billion through the said E-Citizen platform.
Webmasters Africa has since come-out to denounce any such losses saying any embezzlement of funds through the platform would have been immediately flagged by the respective government agencies and ministerial departments who employ the service in their revenue mobilisation efforts.
The platform has over 12 million active users and processes about 500,000 transactions a month.
Moreover, the portal is already credited with the jump of Kenya’s improved ease of doing business by 19 places to the 61st position in 2018 from position 92 through the easing of essential government services to include the registration of businesses.