By Steve Sabai

 

Kenya Power’s mandate is to plan for sufficient electricity generation and transmission capacity, build and maintain the power distribution and transmission network, and retail electricity to its customers.

As a Company, our desire and unwavering commitment is to provide quality and reliable electricity to power people for better lives and to enable the country’s socio-economic development in a sustainable manner.

To do that, the Company carries out routine surveillance of the network, to ensure that it is safe and free from any illegal activities that endanger the lives of members of the public. Illegal connections on the network are a leading cause of deaths by electrocution and damage to assets. They also compromise the quality of power supply and lead to loss of revenue for the Company. Last year, we lost 214 units of transformers valued at an average of Shs.800,000 per unit due to overloading from illegal connections and vandalism.

While working to weed the network off these illegal and dangerous connections, we regrettably note an emerging trend of violent attacks against our staff. The latest of these incidents happened on Monday, 3rd July 2023 in Kitengela where our staff were attacked by the Kitui East Member of Parliament, Nimrod Mbai.

We have taken up this issue with the relevant authorities and the matter is now before the courts. As an entity that prioritizes the welfare of its staff and the public, we condemn this incident and we wish to categorically state that we do not condone any form of violence, at least not on our staff while on official duty.

In line with our mandate to provide reliable and quality electricity supply to our customers, the Company will intensify network surveillance and continue to work closely with the National Government Administration Officers and other security agencies to stamp out all illegal activities.

In pursuit of our mission to power people for better lives, we invite members of the public to report any cases of vandalism, illegal connections, theft of power and any other suspicious activity on the electricity network through 97771 (call or text) or the nearest authorities.