Embu County Government is rolling out an automatic revenue collection system that is expected to seal all loopholes for revenue pilferage. Governor Cecily Mbarire said the system developed in collaboration with the Ministry of ICT and Safaricom will make it possible to monitor revenue collected in real time. She said her government's revenue collection grew from Sh 350 to Sh 679 million in the last one year and automating the system is expected to grow it further to Sh 1 billion. The governor was speaking at her boardroom Wednesday morning when she witnessed the swearing in of the first Embu County Revenue Authority (ECRA) Board members. The board was established by the enactment of a law by the Embu County assembly four years ago but has never been constituted until now. The Board will be headed by Eng Benson Kinga who will be chairman, while the members include the County Solicitor Kimani Karanja, Ms Jennifer Nyaga, Sophie Kaburu, James Ireri, Eric Njeru, Duncan Nyaga Muratia and Damiano Muthee, who is the County Chief Officer for Finance. Ms. Mbarire put the county's revenue officers on notice that forthwith, any of them found collecting revenue in cash will be summarily dismissed, saying the time when the county government entertained cases was over. She cited cess collection points, markets, bus and car parks as some of the notorious revenue loss risk areas and said officers in those departments will need to pull up their socks. Source: Kenya News Agency The Ifriqiya submarine cable in the Ain Meriem area of Bizerte was put into service on Wednesday, in the presence of officials from the Ministry of Communication Technologies and representatives of the private mobile operator Ooredoo Tunisia. Ifriqiya, which has a capacity of 200 Gbt, is connected to the main route between Marseille in France and Abu Talaat in Egypt over a length of 950 km from the Bizerte connection point, offering a high capacity of around 3 TB/s (terabits per second). In a statement to TAP, Kamel Saadaoui, Chief of Staff of the Minister of Communication Technologies, said that this new project is part of the state's strategy and represents one of the priorities in the development of the basic infrastructure of telecommunications networks, as well as an ideal infrastructure for the launch of 5th generation (5G) services. Tunisia has chosen to diversify its operators given the high cost of this type of infrastructure and the need to overcome any problems that may arise, the same source no ted, pointing out that operators are being invited to invest in submarine cables as the country has identified a need for around 6 or 7 submarine cables. Ooredoo Tunisia CEO, Mansour Rachid El-Khater, stressed that the Ifriqiya project is one of the strategic projects launched by Ooredoo to connect the northern Tunisian coast from the city of Bizerte to the city of Marseille in France in record time. Ifryqia is one of the major projects in the digital strategy and an investment magnet for major companies operating in this field, thanks to its high data flow capacity and the quality of the services offered without any interruption problems. Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse
