Kenya Power has announced the completion of upgrading its IT platform, a move that has increased the speed of token generation by prepaid customers.
The upgrade entailed “direct integration of the company’s IT platform to the mobile money operators’ systems” to reduce the process of remitting money via the mobile platforms to receive prepaid electricity tokens. Additionally, the upgrade has provided an opportunity for postpaid customers to self-read their meters and remit the data online for bill generation.
Last week, the CS for Energy, Hon Charles Keter launched the self-reading app which is designed to enhance the work conducted by meter readers and solve the problem of unrealistic bills that lead to reading estimation.
Speaking at Kenya Power’s press briefing, the CS said reading estimations have to stop. “We need to change,” he said.
Dr Ken Tarus, Managing Director and CEO of Kenya Power said reading estimation has reduced from 33 percent to 5 percent with the aim of completely eliminating estimations.
“In our endeavour to provide speedy and quality services to our customers, we recently undertook an upgrade of our IT platform that supports prepaid and postpaid services. The upgrade was intended to enhance service delivery to our customers by easing the process of payment for electricity,” Dr Tarus said.
Over 80 percent of electricity consumption payments are made via mobile money accounts. Furthermore, Kenya Power has 15 vendors including mobile money operators. other vendors included banks, business enterprises with their own network covering regional and national scale, and retailers located within residential areas.
During the press briefing, CS Keter emphasised that KPLC is very transparent and open to any scrutiny. He also directed the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to review the tariff structure in three months while the KPLC board was given three months to re-engineer its operations with the Big Four agenda in order to align itself with customer needs and the competition.
Moreover, the CS ordered KPLC to rationalise the token tariff in one month so as to create a uniform rate to be charged by all vendors.
Keter explained that the aforementioned directives were given to help the government reach its goal of reducing the overall cost of energy. In addition, he said the government is committed to connecting more people to electricity.
