By Macharia Kamau

Criminal gangs are raking in millions of shillings distributing stolen electricity in informal settlements in major urban centres.

The vice has almost locked out electricity distributor, Kenya Power, out of business in these areas. The firm has found it almost impossible to disconnect the illegal lines or even mainstream them, as the gangs have gained immense power in the slums and have easily repelled Kenya Power maintenance and operations teams.

These middlemen, who apply crude means to connect slum dwellers, have put the residents in danger of death by electrocution, fires that are caused by faulty connections and also subjected the residents to premium pricing.

Though illegal connections are not entirely new, the new cadre of ‘‘power distributors’’ retailing electricity in slums are now a major headache for Kenya Power that seems helpless in curbing the crime.

“The people who do the connections do not follow any standards. They lay them on the ground, leaving some live wires exposed, which is a danger to the users,” explained Engineer Noah Omondi, Kenya Power operations and maintenance manager.

“We have had cases of electrocutions, especially during rainy seasons and in fact, many people die but these cases are rarely reported to us.”

“There are also numerous instances where illegal electricity connections have been the source of fires in informal settlements, which has led to loss of life and property.”

The black market trade involving a customer base of several thousands of slum dwellers, and over a Sh1 billion in sales is a headache to Kenya Power management. According to a power utility official, who declined to be specific on how much the company losses, reluctantly disclosed that the loss stood at six per cent of the firm’s total power purchases.

Taking the 2012 power purchase figures, the firm’s financial statement showed that total purchase cost stood at Sh28.3 billion, which translates to about Sh1.7 billion lost annually to the illegal cartels.

Troubled areas

The areas that are worst hit are Nairobi’s Kibera, Mukuru Kayaba, Mukuru Kwa Njenga and Mathare slums.

Omondi said the firm’s  operations and maintenance teams have encountered the middlemen, some of them brandishing guns, while others mobilise rowdy youths to turn away Kenya Power officials touring the affected areas.

“Informal settlements are part of the city and they deserve to have power. The challenge is the middlemen who are fairly powerful,” he said.

The single largest marketplace for illegal electricity connections continues to be Nairobi. The black market has increased dramatically since its heyday in the mid-60’s, with close to one million slum dwellers relying on stolen electric power.

What keeps the black market industry going is its huge profit margins. The middlemen, who illegally source the electricity at virtually no cost retail the electricity at between Sh500 and Sh800 of which 80 per cent of these earnings being profit when factoring in the cheap materials and labour cost involved in carrying out the illegal connections.

Tom Kioko, a resident of Kibera, is a customer to one of the distributors, which he notes is out of necessity. He, however, adds that he could not get metered electricity, saying that would be his landlord’s responsibility.

“I do not mind getting electricity from Kenya Power, but paying the connection fee  is the job of the house owner. I am happy to pay for what am consuming,” he reckons.

Kioko, a relatively new resident in Kibera having lived there for a year, said while he had not witnessed any incident that ended up in death, he has seen many people getting injured by electric shock and property destroyed by fire.

He explained to Weekend Business how he watched a drunk ‘sobered up’ by an electric shock after staggering into a puddle of storm waters last December that was exposed to a live wire buried in the earth.

“Once the ‘distributors’ bypass the meters or tap the electricity from the main lines, they lay some of the wires on the ground in shallow trenches so as to connect the electricity from house to another. They use  low quality wires, whose coating gets won out fast and exposes the wires that pose grave danger when they are in contact with water or human beings,” he said.

“I have only heard about the deaths, some of them recent but there have been many over the years. What I have seen is people injured by electric shock to a point that they are foaming at the mouth.

“I have also seen several fires but fortunately none of them has been major and were all contained by community members before any damage was caused.”

Engineer Omondi contends that in addition to the loss accrued due to ‘theft’ of electricity that is sold in slums, Kenya Power has to grapple with regular breakdown of equipment – including transformers – located near or around informal settlements.

“It affects our equipment and you will find that our transformers that are located close to informal settlements fail frequently,” he said.

He added that the illegal distributors overcharge most of the users, noting that a house in the slum area that uses basic energy saving bulb and a television set could see their power bills reduced by half if legally connected.

“These consumers are not charged based on their consumption. In some instances you will find the middlemen will apply a uniform fee, while at times their fees are pegged on the number of light bulbs in a house.

The fact that one could be using the light for just one or two hours in the evening and hence a low electricity consumer does not count under the informal arrangement,” he explained.

“They are low consumers of electricity and in reality their monthly charges cannot exceed Sh300 to Sh400, but they pay upwards of Sh800 to the middlemen. If they were officially connected, they would fall under minimum band whose power bills are fairly low.”

Kenya Power has a charging formula where consumers using less than 50 units per month, who are low consumers, are charged a cheaper rate.

This class of customers pay Sh2 per unit, which in addition to the fixed cost, the forex and fuel cost adjustment and other such costs, the bill usually comes to under Sh300.