Why only at the coast...?

At the stroke of midnight on Friday, 18/19th of March 2016, the whole of Coast Province descended into darkness and the unbearable heat and humidity that we are all experiencing of late. Thanks to Kenya Power we spent the remainder of the night and most of Saturday being tortured by the heat and by extension, lack of water, too, since the pumps are all dependent on this questionable power company.

Kenya Power would have us believe that they were hunting for the cause of the problem. They were still doing this in the morning and their excuse was the darkness and the jungle through which their lines pass.

Well, according to them, when daylight finally came, they had to get a helicopter to identify the fault which they finally did around mid-morning. 

That is when they actually started working on whatever (technical problem according to them), was ailing it. 

We were told that the power would be back at midday, but, as usual, their word means nothing and midday came and went but no power.

Then, we were told that it would return by 1.00 pm and later 2.00 pm, etc. After all this 'buying' of time, I was told that while restoring power, something else happened and therefore THAT fault would have to be fixed and was given a time limit of 7.00 pm!!!

Mercifully, most of us finally got our power back, but, a whole lot of others still have not got their supply back to normal and are suffering high voltage even as I write this. They were informed ages ago, but, Kenya Power has still not rectified the problem. 

Therefore, these poor people have not had power since over 36 hours and counting.... There is  one family that I know, which has small children and they are really suffering from this awful heat not to mention that everything in their fridge and freezer has defrosted and is spoilt. Their A/c No. is 0340900-1.

Also, why does the Coast Province suffer so many outages? Not just in a month or week, but everyday?!!!

One never hears the same kind of outages involving a whole town/city regarding the rest of the country. But, Mombasa can get an award for the number of times that the whole town (I will not call it a city since it does not behave like one), loses power for hours on end. 

Friday night was a case in point.

Can Kenya Power investigate and whoever else that is interested, why the Coast and in particular Mombasa has so many outages on any given day? There are also fluctuations and power surges which, when reported are given scant attention by this monopolizing power company.

My landline and Telkom Orange

My landline, since the last week of February, suddenly went dead without notice. It is a pre-paid line that was being encouraged by Telkom Kenya since quite a few years as they were at the receiving end of a lot of flack regarding their questionable bills from irate customers.

Since, it has been easier to deal with prepaid lines - it was a win/win situation where they were concerned. They got their money in advance and also did not have to deal with headaches and accusations from customers regarding questionable bills.

I have been one of these prepaid customers since YEARS, therefore, when my line died without any notice, I  immediately reported it to Telkom Orange.

Everytime, I tried to find out, I at first, got a run around, but after a couple of days was told that henceforth, I had two options....

Either, I invest in a wireless line and retain the  same number (this unfortunately is battery dependent in a country with a questionable power supply), or go through formalities one of which is to pay a hefty deposit of 5000/- and return to  post paid services.

Now, without notice, my phone was cut off and to revive it, I have to  go through the added expense of this deposit sum and goodness knows how much of other red-tape involved.

For the past nearly 2 weeks, I have made countless phone calls to Orange 'officials' and been told that my line would be revived, etc., but, to date my land line is as dead as ever and no sign of it ever being revived with empty assurances from Orange to the contrary.

TelkomKenya changed its name to Telkom Orange, but, unfortunately, still retains its previous don't care attitude.

Will they EVER change?