Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen on Sunday formally requested the National Police Service (NPS) to investigate the intermittent occurrence of blackouts after the country was thrown into darkness for the third time in 3 months.
In a statement, CS Murkomen raised fears over the possibility of sabotage at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) which experienced outages in Terminals 1A and 1E, albeit temporarily, before power was restored.
The CS who had at one point assured Kenyans that the government had dealt with incessant blackouts at JKIA, was once again forced to issue another apology following widespread outrage from Kenyans.
Murkomen remarked that after the latest incident, he led a team comprising the Principal Secretary of Transport Mohamed Daghar and Kenya Airports Authority Board Chairman Caleb Kositany among other officials to assess the situation at the airport.
“Considering the frequency of the power disruption, and taking into account the fact that JKIA is a facility of strategic national importance, we are making a formal request to the National Police Service to investigate possible acts of sabotage and coverup,” Murkomen stated.
The Transport CS added that as police launched a crackdown, he would lead a parallel clean-up exercise at JKIA.
“The KAA Board is under strict instructions to carry on with the reform agenda and the management to implement, as directed, the report of the technical committee which I recently constituted,” he added.
KAA on their part stated that they had commenced an investigation into why the generators at JKIA were failing every time the country experienced a nationwide blackout.
The Authority revealed that the generators failed barely a week after they were tested.
“In our commitment to service excellence and operational reliability, we have initiated a comprehensive investigation to identify the root cause of the generator failure,” KAA announced.
The investigations by KAA will bring to number three concurrent investigations being done by three different government departments to ascertain why two generators keep failing every month.
Murkomen on August 26, had promised the nation that at no particular time in the future would JKIA experience blackout again.
Three months and three blackouts later, Murkomen made the same promise again on December 10.
