Residents of Delview estate in Kabati area of Murang’a County are up in arms over the recent power surge that caused them to incur heavy losses in their homes and business premises within the estate.
Speaking to KNA Jackson Kariuki a milk vendor in the area expressed concern that the business community incurred losses during the outages after most of their perishable goods went bad
“There is a day I ended up disposing about 4 litres of milk because it had gone bad. Considering a liter goes for about 50 shillings, that’s a lot of money that I lost on this day. I personally have made complaints to the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) offices here at kabati town but the only thing I’m told is they will come sort the issue out which they have never done,” he said.
Mary Wairimu, a resident in the same estate also spoke to KNA about the issue outside her residence yesterday stating how the power issue has seen her fridge and TV blowing up and how food is rotting in her house due to unavailability of power.
“My TV Set alongside my fridge blew up about 2 weeks ago when power was restored and we had not remembered to switch it off when the usual darkness befell us. I was forced to buy new ones especially the fridge because i own a fast food joint and my ingredients together with the food that remains at the hotel are kept there. KPLC should do something about this because each time we complain they just send someone who comes and does shoddy work and we are back to the problem after 2 days,” she said.
However, Francis Ngugi an electrical manager at the KPLC branch in Kabati spoke to KNA via phone and refuted the claims, validating the power loss issue by stating that they have been working on the issue for quite some time.
“The problem we have in Delview is overloading of the wires. We have had so many people migrating there of late and as you know, nobody would like to stay without electricity. Plans are underway to solve that issue as fast as we can and the residents should be patient,” he said.
By Lydia Shiloya and Ian Kariuki
