Ten senior managers at Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) were on Tuesday, January 18 arrested as investigations into the recent three-day nationwide power outage continue.
Media reports indicated that the managers who were apprehended had been summoned to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) headquarters on Kiambu Road to record statements. They were later taken to Muthaiga Police Station where they spent the night.
Among those arrested is the General Manager in charge of the network, Rapahel Ndolo.
The suspects are being probed on suspicion of negligence and sabotaging electricity supply that affected most parts of the country last week.
They will be arraigned on Wednesday, January 19, with reports indicating that the DCI will file a miscellaneous application to hold them as investigations continue.
On January 15, DCI detectives questioned 18 officials at the power utility company, among them five senior officers, over the collapse of four towers in the Nairobi - Kiambere High Voltage Power transmission line.
The senior officials grilled by the DCI were the Acting General Manager, Network Management, Chief Engineer Transmission countrywide, Countrywide Management Security Service Unit, the Chief Security Officer Nairobi Region and a technician.
According to the team of investigators drawn from the Serious Crime Unit, Crime Scene Investigators and Forensic Photographic Investigators who visited the scene of the collapsed line, the basement of the angle towers of the Kenya Power High Voltage power lines had been vandalized.
The investigators also found that the cross beams had been removed and unbolted a scenario that had the angle towers caving in.
"Since the angle towers had been vandalized, they could not support the weight of the conductors which are very heavy as well as the tower itself," the DCI statement read.
A former high-ranking official at Kenya Power recently shed light on what caused the recent nationwide blackouts, which resulted in financial losses running into millions of shillings as businesses were disrupted.
In a TV interview, Eng. Sammy Muita, a former Chief Manager in charge of Energy Transmission at KPLC, stated that most parts of the country were plunged into darkness on Tuesday, January 11, because of the four power towers that collapsed in Imara Daima, Embakasi were part of a double circuit system.
Asked to explain why some people's power was restored even though the lines were still being repaired, Muita revealed that if one circuit is lost, the system can still be sustained. However, when both are down, it can't.
"If you lose one circuit, the power swings to the rest of the system and it still holds. That is what is called the n-1 reliability criteria. But if two collapse, you can't sustain the rest of the system because there is no infrastructure that can be built with such redundancy of n-2.
"In the same way, if you shut one eye, you can still see with the other one. That is how the system is built," Muita explained.
