Tanesco free power to staff is too much of `free meal`

BY EDITOR

5th January 2014

Editorial Cartoon

Our good power utility firm, Tanesco, is quite adept at pleading poverty every time the staff wants more pay. They simply pass on the bill to the consumer, even when the power doesn’t flow into their homes.

 

The reasoning is predictable and simplistic: rising costs of running their business. Of course, how you stop production costs from rising when you keep on giving out free power to your staff  and relatives, we are told!And, it isn’t the principle of free power that counts; it’s the amount they ask for that bothers consumers, especially when Tanesco staff rush to the Energy and Water Utilities Regulatory Authority (EWURA) begging for more tariffs  as if their consumers have all the money to waste on their not-so-efficient services.

 

Tanesco is one of the last vestiges of public institutions which needs a thorough policy rethink  what with so much alternative sources of energy on the horizons. 

 

To say that Tanesco needs to go private is possibly an ugly understatement. Last week, we published a report on reliable authority that while Tanesco was to start using new tariffs ostensibly in order to cut down operational deficits, the utility body was  also in dire financial straits, incurring up a billion shillings in free power to its staff monthly.

 

Every month, a senior Tanesco staff gets up to 750 units of free power – more than five times an ordinary consumer would get. Do these Tanesco employees run industries in their homes, if we may ask?

 

Tanesco staff is known for its perennial complaints about low pay; but how much of a burden do they inflict on low-income earners from their highly inflated and imaginary bills?

 

We accept that workers across the country deserve incentives, but too much of a free meal within Tanesco is hurting its power consumers.

 

Before the new incentives, Tanesco staff – now estimated at a hefty bureaucracy of 5,000 – were buying power at a nominal Sh6.90 per unit. At that rate, they would pay a paltry Sh6,313.50 for 759 units instead of the commercial rate of Sh206,901.02 which other consumers have to pay.  

 

In other words, Tanesco loses Sh287,940.20 in free power every month from each of its 5,000 staff. Apart from other colossal running costs, the staff cannot use all the free power at their disposal – a huge waste which would have gone to serve other public services.

 

Every month, a single employee retains surplus power which can be used even when some leave the company, our records show. In a way, Tanesco is made to produce power which it gives out for free, our source says.

 

Obviously, we do not begrudge the fact that Tanesco staff do get, and deserve to get, free power. 

 

Yet 750 units is just way out of proportion.

SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY