Kenya Power Sh10bn street lights project hit by funds delays

Kenya Power is set to miss its April deadline for lighting up Nairobi’s streets following delays in disbursement of funds in the Sh10 billion project announced late last year.

The electricity distributor has so far only received Sh953 million of the total budget, money it has already began spending on rehabilitating existing lights and poles along 338 streets in and around the capital city.

The first tranche of Sh371 million was released in October while Sh582 million arrived towards February, a delay which has now forced Kenya Power to push its targeted completion date of the lighting project to June.

“We have been working with the money released in October to rehabilitate streets lights in several parts of the city which entails replacing bulbs, poles and wiring,” said Benson Muriithi, Kenya Power’s general manager for network management.

The electricity distributor says the Sh9.04 billion balance will be mainly used to install new street lights and poles in areas where none already exists.

“Since we are just completing the tendering process based on the latest tranche of money, we expect that this entire rehabilitation exercise will be completed sometime in June.”

Kenya Power in October secured a deal with government to install 54,029 street lights on Nairobi’s major commercial and residential areas, in a grand attempt to turn the city into a 24-hour economy.

READ: Counties get cheaper street lighting rates

The plan will see streets in the Central Business District (CBD), Westlands as well as residential areas like Eastleigh, Kahawa West, Buru Buru and Embakasi get lit up.

Industrial areas set to benefit from the plan include Baba Dogo, Kariobangi Light Industries, and Industrial Area while informal sector zones of Kamukunji and Gikomba.

Nairobi, which is home to about four million people, has approximately 24,000 street lights, 40 per cent of which Kenya Power said were not working and are currently being repaired.

The additional Sh9 billion— which is yet to be released — had been budgeted to install 12,959 new public lighting masts and 54,029 street lights in the second phase of the multibillion shilling project.

“When the project was launched, we had projected that we would be done with the rehabilitation work by April,” Mr Muriithi told the Business Daily.

“While this has not happened as earlier planned, we have made major strides over the past months.”

Kenya Power says the initial funding has been used to replace lights and poles within the Central Business District, parts of Industrial Area and the Buru Buru shopping centre, Jogoo Road among several other areas.

Mr Muriithi said that they have also lit up Lang’ata Road all the way to Kenyatta National Hospital via Mbagathi Road as well as roads connecting Westlands to Village Market.

Street lights have also been installed along the missing links roads that connect Ngong Road, Yaya Centre and Hurlingham as well as those connecting Kileleshwa and Westlands.

Deliberations about lighting up Nairobi streets in order to convert the city into a 24-hour economy have been ongoing for many years, but little has been achieved so far.

Even where street lights have been installed, vandals quickly revert these areas to their original dark status, plunging roads, commercial and residential areas into darkness.

Some vandals divert power from security masts and distributing it to houses charging users a monthly fee while others pluck the copper wires at the control systems for sale.

Kenya Power now says that to curb vandalism, it plans to install concrete poles along roads like Kiambu Road where the vice is rampant and mounting meter boxes on the poles, as opposed to on the ground.