Pass legislation to compensate victims of Kenya Power outages

The Kenyan economy is counting the sixth nationwide power blackout in four years, which hit the country on Friday night. The outage, which is the longest yet in the last four years, has come with dire consequences from reported death in hospital to disrupting the aviation industry.

Flight diversions are costly to airlines since they come with heavy bills in accommodation besides the inconvenience for passengers who miss connecting flights and meetings.

The Transport Ministry has responded swiftly to the crisis but it is a shame that the issues at the airport could and must be avoided.

For a country that aspires to become the dominant economy in the region, the frequent outages should be a major concern for the government.

A recent report by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) shows that Kenya Power is taking more than eight hours on average to connect its more than nine million customers back to the grid after a blackout.

It is time for the government to consider compensating businesses and individuals who incur losses due to power outages.