Nairobi Town Clerk Philip Kisia/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 9 – A lawyer representing matatu operators is now planning to file contempt of court proceedings against Nairobi Town Clerk Philip Kisia for defying a High Court order stopping the collection of parking fees unless the City Council installs parking meters or amends its by-laws.
Kaka Travellers Savings and Credit Co-operative Society lawyer Harrison Kinyanjui argues Kisia is in direct breach the order issued on Wednesday, after the council continued collecting parking fees from motorists on Thursday.
“If he imagines that the City Council of Nairobi can continue using these parking attendants, then we had better disabuse him of that notion,” Kinyanjui said on Thursday.
“Unfortunately, he has to know that times have changed and it is either going to be the rule of law or jail for him,” he stated.
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Kinyanjui also termed as misleading claims by Kisia that the court order had been misinterpreted.
“It would be misleading for Kisia to inform the public that there was no such declaration by the court,” he said.
He further pointed out that under the law, no parking attendant was allowed to collect parking fees from motorists in the Nairobi Central Business District.
He emphasised the advantage of a parking meter terming it as unfair to charge the same fee for a motorist who parks for an hour and another whose car spends the whole day at the parking lot.
“The parking meter is the one that is supposed to be used as an instrument of levying the parking charges. The parking meter has an initial charge and after that you pay based on the amount of time you use the parking space,” he said. “Using parking attendants to demand these parking charges would be illegal. It would be a breach of the law.”
Yellow-jacket parking attendants were on the streets of Nairobi as usual on Thursday levying fees to motorists who wished to park at City Council designated spots.
The High Court on Wednesday quashed the decision by the City Council of Nairobi (CCN) to increase parking fees in the Central Business District and directed the council to follow the law when calculating how much should be charged to motorists.
Justice Weldon Korir said that the council ought to follow its by-laws before increasing parking fees.
“The Traffic Act which donated power to the local authorities to impose parking charges provided that the said parking charges should be imposed by way of by-laws made in accordance with the Local Government Act,” he ruled.
The judge said the council should introduce parking meters to assist calculate the charges. The decision by the court was reached after Kaka Travellers Cooperative and Savings and Credit Society went to court complaining that CCN parking fees were unfair and unreasonable.
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