Lawyer moves to court over Kenya Power inflated bills

A city lawyer has moved to court seeking to have Kenya Power and the Energy Regulatory Commission stop billing electricity consumers with estimated electricity bills.

The petitioners, lawyer Apollo Mboya together with Electricity Consumers Society of Kenya, want the two respondents stopped from billing consumers with inflated backdated bills in an attempt to recover Ksh 10.1 billion contained in their Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year ending June 30, 2017.

“Pending the hearing and determination of this application and petition, this honorable court be pleased to issue an order directed to the 1st respondent to stop and cease disconnecting electricity based on the failure to honour inflated backdated electricity bills and estimated electricity bills,” read the court documents.

The petitioners say that Kenya Power misled its customers by making false or misleading representation with respect to the electricity bills.

They argue that Kenya Power made a false and/or misleading representation with respect to the electricity tariffs and bills to the customers when the bills fell due and the customers have a right to the correction or deletion of untrue or misleading information that affects its customers.

In the petition filed on Thursday evening at the Milimani law courts, the petitioners claim that in the annual report, Kenya Power declared an amount of Ksh 10.1 billion as recoverable fuel costs to be passed on to consumers.

They say that from or about the month of October 2017, several electricity consumers begun receiving inflated power bills from the Kenya Power and has admitted that it has so far recovered Ksh.2.1 billion from electricity consumers allegedly incurred on diesel generation in the year 2017 but were not factored in the monthly electricity bills to the consumers.

They further claim that by a letter dated January 10, 2018, Kenya Power admitted that there are errors in their electricity bills and that some of the bills sent out to customers reflect an amount due in excess of what should have been charged.

They now want the court to declare the monopoly enjoyed by Kenya Power as unconstitutional.

Similarly, they want the court to direct Kenya Power to correct or delete all untrue or misleading information in the electricity bills that affects any of its customers.

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They also want the court to declare that the directive by the president to the Kenya Power to provide electricity to the manufacturers at 50% discount during the low peak period between 10pm to 6am period with effect from 1st December 2017 was discriminatory to other customers, hence unconstitutional.

Also sought in the petition is a permanent injunction directed to the Kenya Power from billing or recovering from its electricity customers backdated electricity bills based on the Ksh 10.1 billion contained in their annual report statements for the year ending June 30, 2017.

Story credit: Citizentv.co.ke