Nairobi plunged into darkness by major technical fault in the Kenya Power system

NAIROBI PLUNGED INTO DARKNESS BY KENYA POWER’S INCOMPETENCE

(Posted 05th December 2013)

image103

image104

image105

Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi was plunged into darkness last night and has, as this report is uploaded, been off the power grid for over 5 hours already, causing untold misery to Nairobi’s residents without access to an inverter home system or a backup generator. Hotels across the city have been operating on their backup generators but already lamented about the extra cost burden, at a time when inflation is inching up again in Kenya as a result of sharp increased in taxes, fees and dues.

Kenya Power, with a few frugal words on Twitter, tried to explain the outage, one of the worst in recent history, as a result of a ‘loss of a line’ without going into further explanations what cause the outage and what level of technical problems they are facing as reports from other parts of Kenya too confirm that they are without electricity.

Only days ahead of Kenya’s 50th Independence Golden Jubilee celebrations on the 12th of December is this a damning indictment of Kenya Power, and the timelines of the social media in Kenya have gone viral with acid comments about what constant sufferers of outages had let fly.

One source close to a top level government office has already, on condition of strict anonymity, confirmed that Kenya Power will be subjected to stringent supervision in the build up to the Golden Jubilee bash, for which some 20 Heads of State are expected to congregate in Nairobi to help Kenya celebrate. In a twist of fate or as others said a stroke of good fortunes will President Uhuru Kenyatta lead the celebrations, as his father 50 years ago led Kenya into Independence from Britain, a scenario not lost on millions of Kenyans who take stock of the first half century of independence while looking ahead to the second half to unfold and bring better times and fortunes for the country.

Meanwhile though has Kenya Power once again become the bogey man of corporate Kenya with an enraged public demanding that heads must roll of those responsible for today’s outage. Watch this space.