NAIROBI: The Government will launch a Sh34 billion project before the end of this month to ensure that up to 70 per cent of the country is connected to the national power grid. In the first phase of the Last Mile Project, thousands of Kenyans, who had applied for power years ago but whose applications have never been honoured, will get priority.
Kenya Power Company Chief Executive Officer Ben Chumo Thursday told the National Assembly’s Committee on Energy that the company will not refund the Sh665 million owed to the 19,000 applicants who have been on the waiting list for up to three years. During the meeting held at Continental House, which was also attended by Rural Electrification Authority top officials, the Kenya Power boss advised power consumers to ignore the letters from his officers that they will be refunded the money.
“We will connect all of them. There’s no intention of refunding the money,” Mr Chumo said. The Jamleck Kamau-led committee sought to establish why Kenya Power had failed to connect the applicants despite collecting Sh35,000 from each.
However, Chumo insisted that the push to connect more Kenyans reached a dead end when the Government subsidy expired. He said Sh35,000 price tag was set in 2003 when one power pole cost Sh5,000. He said posts now cost between Sh16,000 and Sh18,000. “Kenya Power doesn’t make money on connection fees.
That money just caters for the cost and one has to be within a radius of 600m from a transformer, and it should just take two poles,” he said. The aim of the project is to ensure electricity connectivity rises from 37 per cent to 70 per cent by December 2016. Chumo said the move will involve building 24,000km of low voltage power lines.
“We will not ask people to pay the connection fees before we connect them. When we go to a place, we’ll connect everyone who is near a transformer and then they will pay. It is going to turn around this country. It will be a miracle to the economy,” he said. He warned suppliers that they risk being blacklisted if they continue supplying faulty equipment and transformers.
