Motorists will in the near future have a hard time dodging the Sh300 parking fees should City Hall successfully implement the use of drones to monitor parking services in the city.
JamboPay, which provides online parking fee payment services for the Nairobi County Government has written to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) seeking permission to import the drones to help enforce the revenue collection.
The letter, dated August 28, is addressed to KCAA director general Gilbert Kibe and copied to Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko.
According to JamboPay Chief Executive Officer Danson Muchemi, they have developed an aerial imagery compliance data-gathering module that will deploy a drone to collect parking compliance data.
“We hereby request your approval of our importation and operation of two commercial drones,” the letter states.
He said the pilot exercise expected to cost the county government Sh10 million.
“The drones will fly across the parking areas in the city twice a day, capturing and relaying the data to our servers. Each of the drones will cost us Sh4 million and another Sh2 million will be used to set up a software to run it,” said Muchemi.
“The information will then be relayed to the county parking department for appropriate enforcement measures, which include clamping of vehicles whose owners have defaulted,” he added.
Muchemi said that if the project is successful, Nairobi will be the first city in Africa to adopt the drone module of operations.
He said the initiative was meant to increase revenue collection by ensuring that all parking space users paid for the service.
The county loses Sh600,000 a day, translating into about Sh18 million per month in parking revenue.
