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.
-nairobiwire.com
Totally unbelievable!
Indeed, the use of drones for other uses such as wildlife protections from poachers and monitoring of the porous borders, perhaps because they weren’t bringing in revenue. But will this really be allowed for parking violations, when there are serious threats to Wananchi near border towns and to endangered wildlife due to poaching? Seriously unbelievable! I am not saying drones are preferable for any of these; but certainly they are more preferable for security than for parking, as lives lost due to dangers are more important than collecting parking fees. But of course, this would be a private company perhaps being allowed to snoop on Wananchi? Even so, don’t people realize that these can also be used for surveillance of Wananchi. Anyway, how would drones collect parking fees from people whose vehicles are being utilized by others who park cars for them or who borrow cars? Might have trouble in court to prove who was disobeying the parking rules. But monitoring Kenya’s porous borders means safety for Wananchi, including children, in outlying Kenyan schools and towns and villages.
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Indeed, the use of drones for other uses such as wildlife protections from poachers and monitoring of the porous borders was nixed a few years ago in Kenya; Perhaps the former uses were not allowed because they weren’t bringing in revenue and/or cost too much; but now drone use is being allowed to monitor parking?! And I thought intersection cameras were a bad idea since you can’t be sure for certain who is driving the vehicle since the photos only show the license plates.