Kenya Power to shut prepaid system tomorrow for upgrade

Homeowners and businesses on prepaid billing system will be unable to buy electricity units for more than 12 hours from Tuesday night to Wednesday.

Energy distributor Kenya Power has announced that will switch off the system to facilitate its upgrade to a seamless and faster service.

Kenya Power said in a statement the shutdown begins at 11:00pm on Tuesday, April 9 to 6:00pm the next day

“During the shutdown, prepaid customers will not be able to purchase tokens from Kenya Power’s banking halls, pre-paid paybill number 888880 and through all other prepaid vending channels. However, the shutdown will not affect customers on the postpaid service,” said the statement.

Saying it had notified their customers of the planned shutdown, Kenya Power said customers should buy tokens before commencement of the exercise to avoid any inconveniences.

The utility firm said the planned upgrade was a necessary measure that enhances service delivery “and it is among several other initiatives that the company has undertaken to strengthen its operations.”

Customers can buy tokens of between Sh100 and Sh35,000 in a day via the system that reportedly processes upto 200,000 electronic top-up transactions daily, where 85 percent of token purchases are done via M-Pesa paybill number 888880.

Last year in January, the token system went down due to a backlog on pre-paid purchases.

Kenya Power said this forced them to close down the system to facilitate speedy clearance of the backlog.

The listed firm has about 4.5 million customers on the prepaid platform.