Kilifi Governor Gideon Mung'aro, on Saturday, July 6 bowed to pressure from transporters after implementing the dusk-to-dawn collection of cess.
The governor allied with the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), held discussions with drivers and stakeholders in the transport industry after the movement was paralysed in the wee hours of Saturday.
"I have suspended the directive limiting the collection of cess between 6 am and 6 pm. We apologise for the inconvenience caused to transporters, travellers and businesss affected today," he stated.
Mung'aro added that the cess collection at Sabaki Bridge would be suspended on Saturday and Sunday and would resume on Monday.
According to the politician, the county would adopt a 24-hour operation policy and leverage technology to increase revenue collection.
He assured all transporters and business owners in the county that his administration would engage all stakeholders to ensure that the business environment was friendly to all.
Before his directive, truck drivers and other transporters blocked the Malindi-Garsen Highway leading to massive traffic snarl-ups. This was an attempt to get the governor's attention for him to revise the directive.
"We are not going to move vehicles until the governor himself comes, we want him to allow vehicles to work as before," one of the drivers complained.
Per the drivers, this new directive hindered operations especially at night resulting in massive losses and requested the County boss to reconsider the decision.
Meanwhile, Mung'aro explained that he had implemented the directive to weed out corruption at cess stations. He added that this had cost the county a lot of revenue.
To deal with this, he revealed that the county will begin a recruitment exercise to replace the current operators. He noted that these new operators would be at the station as early as Monday.
"The measures we took recently were because a lot of money had been stolen at cess stations. Our county workers are involved and that's why I fired everyone working at the cess station recently," he added.
He also addressed concerns by the drivers who complained about the poor state of the roads. Mung'aro revealed that young men will be hired to fill in some of the roads before a permanent solution is rolled out.
