Energy Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma, on Sunday, March 6, led an operation that recovered Ksh70 million stolen Kenya Power equipment in one homestead in Kiambu.
Speaking to the press, the CS noted that the impromptu operation was carried out in conjunction with Kenya Power officials and police officers.
The stolen equipment included 15 transformers and cables among others used by the monopolistic power company in the distribution of electricity.
“The scale of vandalism as you have seen here constitutes a huge economic loss and just a cautionary assessment is throwing us to about Sh 70 – 80 million worth of loss in this site alone.
“This explains why we needed to have a moratorium to tame the appetite for destruction of strategic infrastructure which in turn hinders government intention of connecting power to several Kenyans,” she told the press.
The infrastructure is believed to have been stolen from various Kenya Power offices in Kiambu County.
Masterminds behind the theft, who are believed to have worked closely with the staff of the utility firm, are yet to be arrested.
The raid is part of the reforms by the Ministry of Energy aimed at streamlining the electricity sector to lower the power costs while improving quality as per President Uhuru Kenyatta's directive.
In October 2021, Kenya Power was declared a special government project after graft claims within its management became rife.
The company was directed to review existing agreements in a bid to lower the cost of electricity in the country. The fruits were experienced in January 2021 after it announced a 15 per cent cut in electricity costs.
The special task force that took over the management of the company has also been working hard to ensure that the nationwide outage that was experienced in January 2021 does not re-occur. The outage was due to vandalism of the equipment.
On Tuesday, February 15, two vandals were arrested after they were accused of being masterminds behind the destruction of electricity infrastructure. The two were reported to be connected to engineers at the troubled monopoly firm.
