Power thefts cost KPLC Sh4 billion

Kenya Power and Lighting Company loses more than Sh4 billion annually due to illegal power connections and vandalism.

According to the firm’s customer service manager Joshua Mutua, the amount is lost to unscrupulous individuals who tap power and sell it to consumers. He said the vice is rampant in slums.

Vandalism alone costs the company Sh3 billion while Sh1.2 billion goes to the pockets of illegal power distributors.

The same criminals are said to use cables and other equipment stolen from KPLC supply system and transformers.

“We lose four per cent of the total electricity that we buy from KenGen and other generators,” said Mr Mutua on Wednesday at Sinai slum in Nairobi’s Donholm area where they carried out a crackdown against illegal connections.

“They will be charged with fraudulent consumption of power,” said Mr Jonathan Masinde, a security officer with the firm.

The KPLC officials said the slum is one of the most notorious areas in Nairobi adding that rampant illegal power connections there alone costs the power supplier Sh500,000 per year.

The power firm’s staff disconnected a cable that was used to tap power from a main electricity line near Donholm shopping centre and pulled it down from telephone poles used to hoist it towards the slum.

Unlike in some previous occasions, residents watched calmly as the workers and police traversed narrow corridors between the congested iron sheet structures, looking for the illegal taps.

The connections are usually made at odd hours in the dead of the night, often causing power outages to genuine electricity users, according to Mr Mutua.

Exposed cables used in illegal power connections have in the past caused deaths in various city slums.