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Kenya Power develops plan for counties to attract investors

WAIGURU-CHUMONAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 13 – Kenya Power managers are expected to within the next two months work with the counties leadership to develop a distribution plan to facilitate the devolving of power to marginalised areas.

Speaking during a meeting between the Devolution Ministry, the Council of Governors and the County Executives ahead of the second devolution conference, where the power company is expected to make a presentation, CEO Ben Chumo said the distribution plan must be submitted before the end of June this year adding that this part of their resolve to ensure devolution was successful and Kenyans reap the fruits.

“We urge the county executives and the entire county government to participate in formulating the plan so that it is exhaustive and so that as we begin implementing the plan, it should be covering every aspect the county expects to be covered by Kenya Power,” said Chumo.

He said this was necessary to open counties for investment as some had very good prospects but due to poor distribution or lack of power, their potential was wasted.

“We know very well that we cannot develop in the dark and no investors will take their money where there is more darkness than light. We shall be carrying out a survey to find the brightest county, and that by extension will show us the darkest county, with respect to electrification,” he added.

“We want to empower the counties so that they can be able to attract investors… so that when you go to investor conferences we should be talking to them about how much energy is available to them, we want to attract development; attract creating of wealth and subsequently create more jobs for the youth,” Chumo explained.

He said the survey would also seek to find out the number of customers connected per county and consumption of electricity per capita per county to help determine a county’s financial ability saying it was a well known notion that countries which consume the highest amount of power are those with the largest economies.

“We will also want to see the capacity of generation per county, of the 2035Mw that the economy holds at the moment, where is most of it consumed and why,” stated Chumo.

He pointed out that this was part of a needs assessment test to help the distribution company know where its services were needed most.

“Because number don’t lie, when they go up they tell a story and when they go down they tell a story, we shall all finally appreciate what this numbers are telling us,” Chumo pointed out.

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He added that the resolve of Kenya Power was to ensure the success of devolution through access to services.

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