Austerity leaves three million Kenyans spending under Sh200 per month on electricity
Millions of Kenyan households keep electricity consumption at a minimum as the strenuous cost of living takes a massive toll on incomes.
According to figures by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra), three million clients out of Kenya Power’s roughly nine million connections load up with less than 10 electricity units every month, a testimony to huge proportion of the population that hardly uses electricity for lighting and powering gadgets.
Epra statistics also shed the spotlight on the frugal lifestyles of workers in the rear end of the income distribution who are just getting by with a measured power bill of less than Kes200 a month (one unit costs about Kes19.8), with food costs comprising the lion’s share of their domestic budget.
The low electricity consumption coincides with a rise in costs after Epra reinstated pass-through costs previously waived by the former President Uhuru Kenyatta administration.
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Epra substantially hiked associated costs such as fuel cost charge, forex charge, as well as fuel and currency surcharge to drive up the utility price by slashing the number of units a consumer gets for a certain amount of money.
The news about Kenyans’ conservative electricity consumption closely follows a Kenya National Bureau of Statistics report on suppressed consumption of Liquified Petroleum Gas in the country also blamed on steep costs.
According to KNBS, usage of LPG fell by 35 percent to 123,150 tonnes in the six months to June 30 this year, compared to the 188,850 tonnes consumed during a similar period last year.
LPG is the second most used household fuel in the country at 24 percent, with its frequency in urban areas reaching 52 percent compared to a 5 percent prevalence in rural areas.
