City parking rakes up Sh2,000 every 15 minutes, so I'm carrying trash to dish out

A car clamped by the Nairobi City County enforcement officers, along Muindi Mbingu Street, Nairobi, on May 14, 2020. [File, Standard]

I recently experienced the power of City Hall, when I parked outside a supermarket on Nairobi's Kangundo Road. There was no parking attendant in sight and, in any case, I had parked there often enough without ever encountering one.

But on this occasion, after less than ten minutes inside the supermarket, I found a female attendant seated near the car. She did not speak with me and I had no reason to speak with her. I drove off. Within a minute of my departure, I received a notification on my phone requiring that I pay some Sh300 for parking.

I tried to contact the number in the notification to first understand how the attendant knew my phone number. There must have be an element of Data Protection laws that had been breached.

My call was unanswered. By the time I rang for the second time, I had received a new message that I had been surcharged some Sh2,000 for not paying the Sh300 fee. The total due was Sh2,300!

All this happened within 15 minutes, which shows systems work at efficiently at City Hall. The problem arises when you seek to use the same resources to pay its bills, which explains why power bills running into billions have not been sorted for years.

I suspect my old debt from parking has since ballooned to tens of thousands, since Sh2,000 fines were generating every 15 minutes. As our people are wont to say, dawa ya moto ni moto, so I'll be keeping a packet of trash in the car, just in case I need to use it to scare away some kanjo attendant.

As for the clamps, which they use to immobilise motorists who forget to pay their parking fees, I understand the real deal is not to stop you from moving on, but to enforce a surcharge for towing. This make a lot of sense as the trucks are owned by the same kanjo attendants.

Enyewe, Nairobi is the proper jungle, not exactly concrete, because so many buildings have tumbled down for lack of proper regulatory framework, as city fathers truck around trash, ready to dish it out.