Martha Karua: Where is the preliminary report on Friday's blackout?

By Peter Ochieng

Narc Kenya party leader Martha Wangari Karua has expressed her concern over the government's deafening silence on last week's countrywide blackout.

On Friday, at about 2145 hours, several parts of the county, among them Mt Kenya, Nairobi, Rift Valley, Nyanza and Western regions were engulfed in darkness occassioned by a blackout that Kenya Power said was as a result of system disturbance.

"At 2145 hours, we experienced a system disturbance leading to loss of bulk power supply to various parts of the county. We are working in collaboration with teams from all involved sector partners to facilitate speedy restoration of power supply in the shortest time possible," KPLC said in a statement, at the time.

However, Karua is alarmed by the fact that no further piece of information has come out from the relevant authorities, over what may have gone wrong.

She said by now, a preliminary report should have been out offering a glimpse of what may have gone amiss.

"By now we should be having a preliminary report on what caused a nationwide blackout last Friday, and why the stand by generators at the JKIA failed otherwise citizens are left to speculate on the happenings," said Karua.

At the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), matters went from bad to worse as one of the standby generators failed to start.

"Jambo! Following a nationwide power blackout, one of the generators serving JKIA's terminal 1A and parking silo failed to start resulting in an outage in a section of the airport," Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) said.

On Saturday morning, JKIA was Cabinet Secretary (CS) for Transport Onesmus Kipchumba Murkomen's first stop.

He dismissed KAA Managing Director Alex Gitari.

He announced that Gitari’s contract had been terminated, with Henry Ogoye taking over with immediate effect.

"By mutual consent, the contract of Mr Alex Gitari, who has been the managing director of Kenya Airports Authority, has been terminated. In his place, Henry Ogoye, who has been Head of Corporate Affairs, has been appointed as the Acting MD," he stated.

Also dismissed was General Manager Project and Engineering Services, Fred Odawo.

The CS said the move should not be viewed as a witch-hunt.

He announced other high-ranking changes at KAA.

"Abel Gogo, the Airport Manager JKIA now moves to Mombasa International Airport. Selina Gor, the Airport Manager Kisumu International Airport will move to JKIA as the new manager," said Murkomen.

"Peter Wafula, the Airport Manager Mombasa, moves to Kisumu International Airport. These changes take effect immediately. More changes will follow in the coming days."

Under the same breadth, the National Assembly has requested Energy Cabinet Secretary (CS) Davis Chirchir and Kenya Power Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joseph Siror, to appear before the House's Committee on Energy Thursday this week, to address the nationwide power outage that occurred on Friday.

The Committee is chaired by Mwala Member of Parliament (MP) Vincent Musyoka.

Chirchir and Sigor are expected to issue a comprehensive account of the factors that led to the outage.