EXCLUSIVE: How Kenya Power staff mint cash through illegal connections
Carwash Zimmerman, an estate along the Thika Super Highway is one of the fast growing suburbs in Nairobi.
Estimated to host hundreds of thousands of Nairobi residents, social amenities such as schools, hospitals, water supply and road infrastructures have sprooted in the area.
Attracting locals from Nairobi and Kiambu County, businesses are growing as food stuff related ventures thrive.
However, with the many merits coming with the development of the estate, Kenya Power and Lightening Company – An independent power supplier in the country has turned some houses a money minting ‘business’.
A sizeable number of plots at Carwash, has gone for a month without lights.
According to credible sources who spoke to Nairobi News in confidence, the prolonged power outage in the estate is as a result of rogue Kenya Power staff who are colluding with some apartments’ owners for illegal connections.
“We have had frequent power outages in this area for years. The problem is the Kenya Power itself, as some houses enjoy illegal power connections courtesy the company’s staff,” revealed a caretaker of one of the apartments, requesting for anonymity.
Some of those houses, power lines and poles are visible yet they claim they were supplied power illegally, who did the installation, posed the informer.
The scheme is well choreographed, to an extent it has an electrician who does the restoration when lights go off in the houses and plots in question.
The electrician, tampers with a transformer that was disabled following the power outages which have left tenants and business operators count losses.
The butcheries and milk vendors who preserve meat and milk using refrigerators, as well as wielders have been lamenting over losses.
“The ‘power expert’ who interferes with the transformer is shielded by a group of landlords, and comes under tight security of rogue youths,” said a local.
Surprisingly, Zimmerman Police Post, Kasarani, is about 200 meters from where the transformer incident occurs.
Sunday, May 21, 2023 Kenya Power took away the transformer unknown to the residents when the power will be restored.
It has since emerged that the independent power supply in Kenya, is acting out of ignorance as the matter has been reported countless times.
On March 25, 2023 a dangling power line linked to the transformer in question took days before the issue was addressed.
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