The number of electricity consumers who are using prepaid meters has hit over 2.3 million.
This is according to Kenya Power data which shows that by the end of June 2016, prepaid customers stood at nearly half of all its 4.89 million customers.
“To further enhance our revenue protection measures, we stepped up installation of prepaid meters to new domestic and small commercial customers. As at the end of the year under review, we installed 985,487 prepaid meters, bringing the total prepaid accounts to 2,317,228,” says Kenya Power in its annual report.
The majority of these new users are in rural areas where Kenya Power has been connecting homes through the Last Mile project. For instance, Kenya Power connected 773,824 new customers in informal settlements during the year to June 2016, who accounted for more than 50 per cent of the company’s 1.28 million new customers over the period.
Prepaid metering was one of the attempts take by Kenya Power to arrest the growing problem of defaulting customers. For instance, by end of June 2016, the amount owed to Kenya Power in unpaid meter charges stood at Sh. 12.4 billion. In contrast, the company had made a profit of Sh. 7.55 billion.
