Engineers accuse Nairobi County officials of interfering with approval system

Institute of Engineers of Kenya (IEK) President Eng Shammah Kiteme at Hilton Garden Hotel, Mombasa Road on June 5, 2024. [File, Standard]

Engineers claim some Nairobi County officials in the Planning department have been interfering with an online system used to apply for approvals.

The system, dubbed Nairobi Planning & Development Management System, was established to ease the application and approval of developments in Nairobi County.

However, the Institution of Engineers of Kenya claim the engineered delay creates an opportunity for corruption citing the system’s failure forces them to physically look for the approval.

The Engineers Institution, led by Shammah Kiteme, made the remarks after meeting with the Nairobi County Assembly Committee on Lands, Planning, and Housing.

“While the system is supposed to ensure that there is no need for me to come here physically, since it's electronic submission, so when you frustrate the process, you create the need for physical contact,” he said.

He added, “And with physical contact, there’s an opportunity to exchange money so that the approval can be done. Here’s how it works: I submit, and as you know, every electronic process has what you call a digital signature. Yet even with that, when you follow up, you're told your submission was never received.”

The Engineers said that sometimes submissions can be made up to four times at that point one will be forced to work in the county offices only to find all those submissions who are being received on the other end.

The online application was supposed to limit physical contact and reduce the waiting time for about four weeks, some developers who don’t play the ball are forced to wait for up to one year. This the engineers describe as a frustrating process.

Recently the institution members have reported cases of delay or missing payment confirmations, unclear workflows and feedback channels citing that the challenges were meant to inconvenience its members but defeat the very intention of the digitalization of the development approval process.

The engineers said their efforts to reach out to the Executive had not borne fruit after explaining their challenges, forcing the Assembly Planning Committee, chaired by Alvin Olando, to invite them to share their grievances.

“We could not discuss much today because some of our members were away, but on the issues, touching on corruption, we are expecting the engineers to share with us the evidence of how the corruption is taking place,” Olando stated.

“I have heard about delayed approvals, but we will give the institution enough time to shed light on the matters, but there are other issues that we are going to hear from them,” he added.