BY SAM ALFAN.
Former Law Society of Kenya CEO Apollo Mboya has filed an application in court seeking to stop Kenya Regulatory Commission from implementing new retail tariffs to be levied on postpaid customers saying it saying that they are discriminatory.
Mr Mboya argues that the new tariffs structure discriminates a significant majority of the domestic consumers and favors the majority bulk power consumers.
Mboya says that it is only the Manufactures who consume bulk powers that will see a significant savings when they adjust their production plans to use power night when the rest of the country is asleep, power that according to him goes to waste.
“The Energy Act 2006 which the 2nd respondent (ERC) has purported to issue the New Harmonized Tariffs cannot supersede the Constitution provisions,”reads court papers.
According to Mboya, ERC has no constitutional mandate to purport to review the electricity tariffs.
In the case the former LSK CEO is seeking court orders to stop the implementation of the new tariffs announced early this week.
Mboya is apprehensive that if thecourt fails to intervene, power costs for middle class households will suffer as the new billing is operational.
The new tariffs are effective from August 1 for prepaid users July 1 for those of post-paid meters.
Mboya argues that under the new tariff poor households that consume less 11-5- kilowatts per month will pay more than before as compared to those who were burning between 51-51000.
It is his argument that the energy regulator has increased tariffs by more than four times.
He claims that the new tariffs has the effect that for the first 10 units kwh of energy consumed by domestic consumers will now cost 12 shillings from 2.5 shillings previously charged and that a consumer will for the first ten units part with 120 shillings up from 25 shillings previously.
On Monday the regulator removed the 150 Shillings fixed charge payable to Kenya Power for all electricity meter connections, with the aim of smoothing out billing fluctuations especially for customers on prepaid meters.
Justice Pauline Nyamweha directed the matter to heard by the vacation judge on 27 of this month.
