Lucianne Limo
25 April 2008
Nairobi — The Kenya Power and Lighting Company has refuted claims that it over-billed its customers to fund political parties in the elections.
KPLC General Manager, Mr Don Priestman, termed the allegations as untrue, wild and unfounded.
"I have never signed any cheque of whatever amount to a political party during the last General Election," he said.
Kenya Power and Lighting Company General Manager, Mr Don Priestman (centre), the company's Chief Human Resource Manager, Mr Ben Chumo and his Commercial counterpart, Ms Rosemary Gitonga during a press conference at Electricity House, Nairobi.
A report issued by the Coalition for Accountable Finances on Wednesday alleged that the power company over-billed its customers and paid the proceeds to a political party in the run-up to last year's elections.
The report urged customers to scrutinise their bills from a certain month to verify if they were inflated.
"KPLC is therefore shocked that the report by the NGO, which was purportedly researched, would make such ridiculous claims against the company without having made any attempt to talk to the company," Priestman said.
He explained that the basis of all electricity bills is the units of electricity used as measured by meters installed at customer's premises.
Priestman added that the operations of the power company were transparent and their books open for scrutiny.
"All details of our operations, including purchase of bulk power, billed units, payments received from customers and payments we make to our suppliers are available for anyone with an interest of telling the truth," he added.
Priestman was speaking to The Standard at the KPLC headquarters yesterday.
He asked the research body to provide evidence to support the allegations.
"Failure to do that, the NGO owes KPLC and its customers an apology for issuing misleading information," he said.
Priestman said it was unfortunate that such unfounded allegations were made at a time when the power company was working hard to collect money owed to it by the Government.
He assured its customers that KPLC would never involve itself in the kind of fraud against them as purported by the NGO.
"I urge customers to ignore the wild allegations made by the NGO," Priestman said.
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