Court services at the Mombasa Law courts were put on hold for a few minutes on Wednesday, February 10, following a power outage that lasted roughly 20 minutes.
The blackout forced magistrates to cut short the proceedings as prison officers got on high alert to ensure inmates who had been brought to court did not escape. Prison officers used hand torches to watch over the prisoners until power was restored.
Kenyans questioned the operations of the court wondering why there were no generators installed to ensure smooth proceedings during such incidences.
A similar incident happened on July 17, 2018, during the hearing of a case involving former Kenya Power Managing Director Ken Tarus, his predecessor Ben Chumo and 17 other officials who were facing corruption charges over the alleged procurement of faulty transformers worth millions of shillings.
Kenya Power had earlier reported expected power outages in various parts of the country with interruptions at the coastal region projected to occur at 9:00am to 3:00pm in areas falling within Kanamai, Junju in Kilifi County.
In January, Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) set up a mega substation in Isinya, Kajiado to complement a similar facility in Rabai, Mombasa. The station came as a relief to consumers in Nairobi and Mombasa who had over the years been inconvenienced by frequent power disruptions.
"The Isinya substation has the capacity to evacuate power from a line undergoing maintenance without interruption of power supply to consumers. Before part of Nairobi and Mombasa used to experience power outages when the Nairobi-Rabai line had issues," said Stephen Achia, Ketraco’s engineer in-charge of Isinya region.
Speaking to Business Daily, Achia said there was constant and sufficient power supply in high power-consuming factories within industrial area Nairobi and those in Mombasa.
"It is our mandate to ensure big companies have constant power supply to boost the local manufacturing sector. Once the new line to Western of the country is commissioned, power outages will be addressed in that region permanently," Mr Achia said.
Courts in Kenya face many challenges that affect and/or limit daily operations. The judicial system heavily depends on paper filing for case management. An advancement into newer technology would majorly help in keeping better track of all the court cases for the purposes of planning and reporting which would in turn hasten the processes at which justice is dispensed.
Other than that, power backups systems are also a concern in most courts around the county. The need for uninterruptible power supply units would ensure continuity when power is swapped from main source to the generator power backup during blackouts.
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