•The ten were arrested Tuesday in the ongoing probe into claims of sabotaging electricity supply.
•Police said six towers along the Olkaria-Kisumu power line were also vandalised in Naivasha.
Image: FILE
Ten Kenya Power company officials were driven to Kahawa Law Courts within the precincts of Kamiti Maximum Prisons ahead of their arraignment on Wednesday.
The ten were arrested Tuesday in the ongoing probe into claims of sabotaging electricity supply that affected most parts of the country last week.
Officials from the Serious Crime Unit, who are handling the case, said they intend to make a miscellaneous application before the court and seek to hold the ten for 21 days to enable them to conclude investigations.
Lawyers of those held rushed to the court after they heard their clients would be taken to Kahawa instead of Milimani or Kiambu.
Kahawa is usually reserved for terror suspects.
The ten, including the General manager in charge network, were summoned to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) headquarters, where they were questioned and later driven to Muthaiga police cells ahead of the arraignment.
DCI George Kinoti had last week directed detectives from the Serious Crime Unit to grill the senior officials charged with the responsibility of securing high voltage lines and transmission from the national grid.
Police said six towers along the Olkaria-Kisumu power line were also vandalised in Naivasha on Tuesday. Energy Principal Secretary Gordon Kihalangwa yesterday toured the affected parts.
Preliminary investigation also points to sabotage. The Naivasha incident comes barely a week after a similar incident at the Kiambere-Embakasi line at Imara Daima.
Investigations have revealed that a joint task force by Kenya Power and the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) had on December 8 furnished the Board with a report that, among other things, recommended that the basement of angle towers of Kenya Power’s high voltage power lines in Embakasi had been vandalised and the cross beams unbolted.
The probe established that a few days after Eng. Rosemary Oduor was appointed the managing director, she wrote to the Board on August 10, 2021, indicating that some materials had to be bought for the maintenance of the power lines.
But the information was ignored, leading to the collapse that caused a major outage.
Detectives have visited the scene and established that the basement of the Angle Towers of Kenya Power High voltage power lines had been vandalized and the cross beams unbolted and removed.
Edited by Mercy Asamba