Kenya Power confirms system glitch, directs customers on how to purchase tokens

Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) technicians in the line of duty.  [Mose Sammy, Standard]

The Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) has confirmed that it is experiencing a system glitch due to a network breakdown of its service provider.

Some of the services that have been affected are the purchase of prepaid tokens through M-Pesa and USSD Code *977#.

In a statement on Thursday, July 27, Kenya Power asked their clients to purchase tokens through their banking halls, Airtel Money, and authorised banks as the issue is resolved. 

“We are working with our service provider to restore the affected services as soon as possible. We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused.”

On Thursday, customers took to various social media platforms to complain about their inability to access KPLC services.

A KPLC customer trying to pay earlier got this response: “Transaction failed, M-PESA cannot complete payment of Sh 2000.00 to KPLC PREPAID. The Organization's system receiving the payment experienced some technical challenges, try again later.”

The government’s eCitizen platform also experienced downtime on Thursday.

ICT Cabinet Secretary Eluid Owalo, during an interview with Spice FM, confirmed that the eCitizen platform was indeed hacked.

“Yes, the eCitizen platform was hacked and we are addressing it. They tried jamming the system by making more than ordinary requests to the system. However, no data has been accessed or lost,” stated Owalo.