Friday 23 January 2015

Kibera residents to benefit from subsidised power


Residents of Kibera in Nairobi will now enjoy safe, legal and reliable connection to electricity supply at affordable rates, Dr. Ben Chumo, the company’s Managing Director and CEO, has revealed.   

Dr Chumo said this when he joined community leaders in Kibera to launch a special programme that Kenya Power has developed to assist such potential customers in informal settlements, who are unable to pay the upfront cost of connection to electricity. 

The special programme is supported by the GPOBA (Global Partnership of Output-Based Aid), a World Bank programme, that has helped subsidise the cost of electricity connection to such residents in different parts of country.  

The programme is designed in such a way that a qualifying resident will pay a subsidised charge of Shs.1,116 per connection, Dr Chumo added.  The World Bank /GPOBA will contribute US$ 225(Shs.19,350), while Kenya Power will contribute Kshs.11,970 per connection in order to make up the standard capital contribution of Kshs.32,480.     

“ Kenya Power has opted to pre-invest, which involved using its contribution to the programme by constructing overhead lines, installing transformers and other infrastructure to facilitate connection before the customer subsidy can be claimed from the World Bank”  Dr. Ben Chumo said.  

The company has gone further to make it easier for the residents to get connected by offering credit facilities. The residents of Kibera will be connected to prepaid meters which will be installed once the customer signs the necessary credit documents. The connection fee of Shs.1,160 will then be recovered from the customer’s purchase of prepaid tokens.   

More than 20,000 customers in Kibera will be connected through the programmes and hundreds of thousands others are targeted all over the country.  

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