MP Wandeto blames Kenya’s electricity woes on over-reliance on one distributor

Tetu Member of Parliament Geoffrey Wandeto has attributed the country’s electricity woes to a monopoly in power distribution.

This is in the wake of recent 12-hour nationwide power outage which saw business services as well as operations in key state establishments such as the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Nairobi paralysed.

Speaking during Tuesday’s Day Break program on Citizen TV, Wandeto termed it an embarrassing situation, saying Kenya’s over-reliance on Kenya Power as the sole power distributor needs to be questioned.

“We all know what happened when we relied on one telephone operator. This whole thing of liberalising distribution is overdue. If we had two distributors, maybe the second company would be working when the other was down,” he said.

According to the legislator, there is a need to open up the power distribution sector to many players as is the case with the many independent power producers (IPPs) operating in the country.

“The same way we have liberalised generation and now we have IPP, despite the challenges we have with them… has shifted our problem from generation to distribution. It is because we are held by a monopoly,” Wandeto said.

Following Friday’s blackout, power producers Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) and the distributor Kenya Power (KPLC) traded accusations.

While KPLC blamed the power supplier for the mess and said it sent engineers into the wind farm to determine what caused the unusual blackout, LTWP claimed in a statement on Saturday that it was not producing power at the time.

LTWP said its system automatically went off, to avert damages to an already overcharged national grid, absolving itself of the blame.

Wandeto on Tuesday noted that the blame game was not the solution, saying, “The important thing is not this blame game. It is a technical issue that needs to be analysed; it is about finding out how to build a sustainable power grid that sustains the country.”

Following the power outage at KPLC, transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen dismissed the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) Managing Director Alex Gitari and General Manager Project and Engineering Services, Fred Odawo.