Kenya Power bosses were on Thursday thrown out of a parliamentary session after they failed to give lawmakers the names of powerful individuals said to be behind the utility’s expensive electricity.
The National Assembly’s Public Investments Committee on Commercial Affairs and Energy accused Kenya Power of providing generic responses to the Auditor-General who questioned how the company sunk into negative working capital of over Sh70 billion in the year to June 2019 and Sh75 billion in the year to June 2020.
The committee accused Kenya Power of shielding cartels through general responses when Kenyans ask questions on the real reasons behind the high cost of power.
The MPs said they suspect that cartels at the electricity distributor are working with Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to reap Kenyans through expensive power bills.
David Pkosing, who chairs the committee, sent away Kenya Power’s acting managing director Geoffrey Muli on grounds that the management had failed to provide adequate responses to the audit queries.
“Kenya Power has had negative working capital after posting losses for four consecutive financial years. But you are giving us a generic response. Just own up that you have no capacity to respond to us,” Mr Pkosing said.
Kenya Power sunk into a Sh1.1 billion net loss for the half year that ended December, blamed on the weak shilling and the 15 percent electricity tariff cut that was effected in January last year as a State directive.
Financial results announced Monday showed the performance dipped from the Sh3.82 billion net profit that had been posted in the preceding similar period.
The utility firm said the tariff reduction by 15 percent saw the basic electricity revenue drop by Sh6.69 billion, highlighting the price it paid to deliver discounted prices to consumers.
Mr Muli appeared before the committee to respond to an audit which showed that KPLC liabilities hit Sh115 billion against its assets of Sh44 billion resulting in negative working capital of Sh70 billion in the year to June 2019.
“It is true that KPLC is not doing well and something needs to be done to turn around the company. As part of our plans, we have curtailed increases of the system losses by 0.5 percent annually,” Mr Muli said.
He said the firm is pursuing the rollover of existing money markets facilities in order to ease pressure on cash flow.
Mr Muli said the utility had intensified debt collection and is pursuing the Treasury to refund its Sh19 billion that the government collects on its behalf.
He said KPLC is deploying smart meters and is rolling out a campaign dubbed know your meter using its staff.
“We have restricted capital spending to critical projects. We are pursuing an optimal balance between generation and demand and we have asked the government to release Sh19 billion that is owed to Kenya Power,” Mr Muli said.
“We have also sought on-lent debt repayment moratorium,” he added.
