The government is now collecting Sh400 billion from e-citizen alongside other immigration functions, Immigration Principal Secretary Prof Julius Bitok has disclosed.
The PS further revealed that about 18,000 services are now offered on e-citizen.
“From 354 services on e-citizen, we are now doing 18,000 services digitally. The result is that the government collects Sh300 billion from e-citizen alone and another Sh100 billion on other immigration functions, making it one of the best performers in revenue collection,” said Bitok.
Bitok said there has been a huge leap in the cash collection following the government’s deliberate move to put most of its services on the digital platform.
The PS was speaking when he hosted Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and acting Interior and National Coordination Cabinet Secretary at the Nyayo House.
He noted that Kenya has surpassed Rwanda with about 700 online services alongside other countries like India and most of the European countries which have less than 500 such functions digitally.
Bitok said the government had identified 20,721 services for onboarding onto the e-Citizen platform.
Bitok said in the Financial Year 2023/2024, the State Department had issued 539,810 passports, 28,121 work permits, 186,892 temporary permits, 566,294 visas, and 666,475 Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA).
“We have also given out 1,002 citizenship certificates, 1,472 Permanent Residence certificates, 824,364 ID cards (2nd generation), and 972,630 Maisha cards (3rd generation). We have also registered 1,168,151(75 per cent) births and 204,498 deaths, which is 45 per cent,” he said.
During the same period, the PS said 6,996,404 Kenyan citizens and foreign nationals were cleared at the point of entry, while 145,746 refugees were registered.
The PS said the State Department was collecting about Sh900 million to a billion daily from their services from a paltry Sh60 million daily when there were less than 400 services.
He noted that they had done away with the several pay bills that were causing confusion and possible leakage of cash and instead had adopted the 222222 pay bill number as the sole mobile payment number.
Mudavadi thanked the officers at the State Department for their dedication and urged them to give Kenyans their best services as a sign of patriotism to their country.
“Your first and last agenda should be to the service of Kenyans,” said Mudavadi.
He noted that through technology, the country will remain on the right trajectory and urged for the onboarding of the remaining services to ensure that there was no cash interaction between the government officers and Kenyans thus diminishing corruption.