Kenya Power has blamed Vandalism for a lot of power outages in rural areas.
Speaking during The Great Energy Debate Kenya Power Acting Managing Director Jared Otieno, said that vandalism has become rampant especially in the rural areas. Otieno however says the firm is committed to fighting the vice.
VANDALISM blamed for alot of outages of power in Kenya's rural areas. Here is @KenyaPower Acting MD #Jared. #TheGreatEnergyDebateKE pic.twitter.com/FxcYyMdjJU
— #TheMoneySeriesKe (@KangetheNjoroge) August 15, 2018
Speaking in Nanyuki when the company’s senior management team met with the parliamentary committee on energy in a stakeholder engagement forum in July, Kenya Power MD Ken Tarus said that the company was losing hundreds of millions in revenue from vandalism of its transformers, meter tempering and power theft through illegal connection and is now seeking harsher penalties to deal with perpetrators of such crimes.
The firm is currently conducting an operation on illegal connections in different parts of the country. Power theft through illegal connections as well as Vandalism and meter tampering cost the company Kshs 500 million annually.
The Great Energy Debate hosted big names in the Energy Sector and was convened by James Ngomeli from Brands and Beyond Limited.
Others panelists during the debate include Epicentre CEO Mary Njue, and Rural Electrification Authority CEO Peter Mbugua and Kenya Nuclear Electrification Board Collins Juma.
Among the issues discussed were the probability and sustainability of having nuclear power in Kenya as well as if it is still viable for the country to have a coal plant even when developing countries are running away from the dirty source of energy.
Kenya can and should be a global leader in generating 100% of its electricity via clean energy (solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, hydro etc).
Unfortunately this is not where we are heading (A THREAD) #TheGreatEnergyDebateKE pic.twitter.com/HzeDJibxuY— #deCOALonize (@Justice_Elmawi) August 15, 2018
As a country located at the equator, Kenya should move faster in adopting renewable energy to mitigate effects of climate change. From solar to wind energy, we have a lot that we need and can harness.
In a post ‘COP21’ world, more and more countries are putting more emphasis on attaining the right mix of fuel sources to meet both demand and emissions goals.
