Editor's Review

Cherargei noted that lives and businesses were lost in the prolonged blackout. 

Nandi senator Samson Cherargei now wants the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) to he held accountable for the nationwide blackout. 

The power outage hit the the country on the evening of Friday, August 25, and on Saturday, the same was yet to be restored in many parts of the country. 

Cherargei noted that the blackout adversely impacted activities in important facilities and institutions such as hospitals and the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) where travellers were stranded on the same night of the blackout.

He counselled the relevant agencies to put in place top-notch measures that can mitigate such a situation.

"The countrywide blackout was very unfortunate whilst emergencies happen, the preparedness to address the emergency should be top notch especially on our critical national installations such as hospitals, Airports e.g JKIA by providing standby generators which did not happen then heads MUST roll," he said.

Nandi senator Samson Cherargei.

The senator at the same time called for the compelling of the power utility firm to compensate Kenyans following the prolonged outage.

He observed that lives were lost, with businesses incurring losses in the bout of the power absence.

"The KPLC must quantify and compensate the loss of lives and businesses lost during the massive blackout across the country," he said.

KPLC attributed the outage to a system disturbance that let to a loss of bulk power supply to various parts of the country. 

"We are working in collaboration with teams from all involved sector partners to facilitate speedy restoration of supply in the shortest time possible.

We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused and we reassure them that our technical team are currently working to identify the root cause and restore power to the affected areas," it said.