Is the Kenya Power and Lighting Company above the law that it can fleece Kenyans with such abandon without penalties? Is the complacency inherent in retaining the KPLC monopoly, despite criminal power outages, spiralling household cost of electricity and lax maintenance part of government revenue collection or simply retention of a profitable milch cow from the single-party days? For what honestly explains KPLC’s immunity while presiding over activities that sabotage the economy and compromise national security without outrage, nay, severe reprimand from government?
For the 40 years I have been paying for electricity, the constants have been skyrocketing bills and blackouts. The terror of sudden darkness, extra costs of substitutes such as torches and rotting food affect all consumers and cannot be measured for compensation. Add to this the small but material inconveniences and you have a nation victim to gross incompetence.
Saturday’s display of lethargy, in which the country was thrown into eight hours of darkness, with emergency sources automatically also going on strike, was particularly shocking. The country was dangerously exposed, you could leisurely sneak explosives into any airport and airline, or al Shabaab could cart off arms caches to any target in Kenya and a crazy Donald Trump type obliterate us from the face of the earth without us being any the wiser.
What caught the ire of Kenyans was not so much that it is happening ever so often – thrice this year – but the casual response from both KPLC and government. Tired of the monologue of ‘technical hitch’ occasioning the blackouts, KPLC invented comic relief with the sweetener dud that a monkey “fell into the Gitaru power station, dropped onto a transformer and tripped it, causing an overlord that resulted in a national power blackout”. Government honchos like Transport CS James Macharia see everything in non-alarmist “slight” delays and inconveniences, even as the whole country is staring into unfathomable darkness and the economy is disrupted.
Well, the mind can persevere the severity of a blackout but the pocket is too delicate for the punitive electricity charges. Jubilee promised increased production and connectivity. Increased clean geothermal power has been useful in launching the Last Mile Connectivity Project. More villagers are connected to the national grid cheaply under concessionary rates. But at what cost and at whose expense?
Unexplained taxes account for a quarter of the post-pay bills. It is even more punitive for those on pre-paid tariffs. For Sh1,000 worth of tokens, your electricity is worth only Sh424.27 while taxes take the bigger chunk of Sh575.73. The paid-for units are 74, which for lighting, ironing, powering the fridge and electronics do not last a week. You are Sh4,000 poorer every month.
Where is the place of rural electrification in the distribution chain? Was it scrapped after achieving ‘electricity for all’? Why Deputy President William Ruto’s obsession with the Last Mile Connectivity Project? It seems as if he is the implementing officer as he seeks to mine it for political capital.
The DP has become the poster boy for the project. If he is not eating ugali saucer in some nondescript kiosk, he is sipping tea from a mabati mug in one part of the country or the other. Increasingly, no function of the DP’s is complete without these pictures these days. But are we getting any value for our money? In Kenya, high project publicity is usually a precursor of the looming scandal.
Communications, Publications and Conflict Management Specialist, University of Nairobi