Power Outage Engulfs Most Parts of Kenya Saturday Morning

Kenyans in most parts of the country woke up in a mega power outage on Saturday morning as numerous blackouts in the country continue becoming the norm.

The whole of Nairobi, the capital city and the famous City on the Sun was in blackout with the Kenya Power company saying that there was a technical error and that their engineers were working on it.

This is not the first time Kenyans are facing a major power outage. During the month of June, another major power outage engulfed most parts of the country in what came to be explained later as the interference by the monkeys in the main power plant. KenGen said then that a monkey fell on a transformer at the Gitaru hydroelectric power. The power provider said that the transformer then tripped, resulting in the loss of 180 megawatts of power and triggering a blackout across the country.

With the rise in the fuel prices, whenever there is a power outage, Kenyans who must use power to run their businesses often spend huge sums on money on diesel.

Last month, the Energy Regulatory Commission raised fuel prices by up to 13 percent despite the prevailing low price globally for crude oil.

Kenya losses millions of shillings in form of revenue whenever power goes for an hour and businesses that entirely depend on power incur losses during such times.

Kenya Power has been known for engineering blackouts that sometimes last for 10 hours under the excuse of maintenance. Angry Kenyans have on several occasions questioned why the power company has to do its maintenance during the day when business activities are vibrant.

The questions people are asking themselves are:

• Why do we always have numerous power blackouts?
• Does Kenya Power know how important power is to the economy?
• If the main power plant is such important, why is it always left unguarded?
• With more than 10 million customers and more than 20 million others indirectly depending on Kenya Power, what is being done to rectify the situation?