Residents of Kijiwetanga village in Malindi Sub County, Kilifi County are up in arms with Kenya Power for the high cost of electricity and frequent power blackouts.
They also complained of negligence and poor implementation of the Kenya Rural Electrification programme which they termed as dangerous to their lives.
Led by Captain Retired John Kai, the residents said that they have incurred huge losses in their houses due to the outages and wondered why the KPLC was not responsive to the problems of their clients.
“This power only functions two hours in a week and we wonder what Kenya Power wants us to do. We have raised complaints but nothing has been done,” he said.
A visit to the village depicts a sad picture as low hanging power lines and sagging cables pose a threat to residents.
The poles are also bending which increases the risk of children touching them.
“There are 10 homes which lose power while the rest of the neighbourhood has power, so there is power yes but low voltage is affecting some houses, something that KPLC needs to look at and get a conclusion to,” he said.
Mr Oscar Chiro, another resident said that normally power is on and off for quite some time due to low voltage adding that at times lights are not working but the customer interface shows power was being consumed.
“Whenever we call KPLC the usual answer is that we know and they are going to resolve it but they usually take a long time to respond,” he said.
He added that some of the power lines were running very close to trees and across people’s compounds and lands hence giving developers a hard time.
Mrs Nancy Kai said that she has been frustrated by Kenya Power services for so long because the manner in which they were responding was not good.
She said it’s not even safe to leave children at home alone due to the constant power blackouts and called for action to be taken to ensure people live safely.
The KPLC officer in charge of North Coast Robert Mahaga when contacted for comment promised to resolve the matter with the urgency it deserves.
The residents are also calling for the government to introduce alternative power suppliers to weed out the Kenya Power monopoly which they said the company was misusing.
