Kenya Power logo.[Photo/businessdaily]Lawyer Apollo Mboya has threatened to sue Kenya Power before end of the day (Thursday) for misguided power bills which led to a number of consumers being affected last year December.
Mboya noted that he has received a response letter from the utility firm expounding on the source of the error hence the extra charges in the December billing.
"I am signing papers as we speak and will be in court in a short while to sue," he said.On January the 5th 2018, Mboya acting on behalf of consumers wrote to Competition Authority of Kenya protesting ‘abuse’ of market dominance by Kenya Power to ‘overcharge’ consumers.
In his charge, he mentioned that in the month of November or December 2017, several consumers started receiving high power bills.“It later emerged that KPLC was indeed recovering Sh8.1b backdated bills from electricity consumers allegedly incurred on diesel generation in the year 2017 but were not factored in the monthly charges while the government sought to keep a lid on utilities in an election year,” says Apollo in a letter to Competition Authority of Kenya.
The response letter dated January 10th 2018 to lawyer Apollo Mboya had Kenya Power put the blame on erroneous power bills for the month of December to a new system. The letter from Managing Director’s office Ken Tarus put away the claims of breach of the provisions of Competition Act or the Constitution instead inviting Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to investigate complaints raised by the lawyer.
“In November 2017, we migrated to a new integrated customer management system which is geared towards among other things immediate update of payment of bills done through our third party EasyPay partners; enabling customers check and query issues like bills, own consumption patterns and power supply through mobile phones,” reads the Kenya Power letter.
“We have realised that there have been errors in the conversion to the new system and that some bills which have been sent out reflect an amount due in excess of what should have been charged.” Kenya Power said it has begun a publicity campaign to notify its customers of any possible errors in the bills they may have received in the month of December and invited them to bring the matter to attention.