The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) report shows that 680,000 Kenyan homes are illegally connected to electricity.
According to the report, data provided by the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) indicated a variance of 678,684 connections between homes that claimed to be connected to electricity for the 2019 census.
Consequently, the illegal connections have led to losses at the utility firm which have subsequently led to the sharp rise in electricity charges currently experienced in the country. KPLC loses about 20 per cent of its revenue due to fraud and illegal connections.
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"These losses contribute to high power charged to the consumers since the industry regulator allows the company to charge up to 19.19 per cent of the power losses to consumers," Auditor General Nancy Gathungu stated.
To mitigate the losses recorded, the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) gave the green light to the electricity distributor to recover 19.9 per cent units from generators. This was up from 14.9 per cent the power firm buys from generators.
Consequently, consumers were forced to pay an extra Ksh5.06 billion. At the time, KPLC bought 12,131 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity but managed to sell 9,203 GWh-This means 2,928GWh were lost.
Despite the hitches, the power firm has doubled its profits to Ksh3.5 billion during the financial year ended in June 2022, this was a significant improvement from the Ksh1.5 billion it recorded in the financial year of June 2021.
