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Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Uganda’s main electricity distribution company, UMEME has decried weak legislation as a major impediment towards fighting power theft and vandalism in the country.
The company lost at least 40 transformers to vandalism in addition to several other electricity supply infrastructure and illegal connections in the first half of 2018 alone. This translated into an estimated annual average loss of 100 billion Shillings.
David Birungi, the Stakeholder Relations Manager at UMEME Limited says that their efforts to contain the habits have not yielded much due to a less deterrent legal framework. He says the available law does not provide stringent punishments to culprits of power theft or vandalism to equipment from the network, despite the huge losses the habits cause to the company and the country at large.
The Electricity Act gives a maximum penalty of two million Shillings in fines or a three-year jail sentence to offenders convicted of power theft and illegal connection. Below the maximum, the law provides for lighter sentences of caution and community service to the culprits of offences related to electricity theft.
According to Birungi, the underlined punishments are too weak to stop the widespread power thefts and vandalism that are contributing to huge losses to the company and the country. He asked the public to support the amendment of the law to introduce punitive penalties.
But Lwengo District Vice Chairperson Christopher Ssensalire has largely attributed the problem to internal dishonesty by technical staff, whom he accuses of retrieving the equipment they are assigned to install on the power network.
Ssensalire also blames UMEME of failing to maintain all their built lines powered all the time, arguing that this also gives vandals an opportunity to freely vandalize the equipment.
UMEME’s Operations Manager for Masaka sub-region Barbara Kasande indicates that with all their vigorous efforts put in place, they have only managed to reduce the area’s power loss by 2 percentage points from 25 per cent in 2017, which she says calls for more serious interventions to eliminate the problem.
She asked the community leaders to fully support efforts to fight thefts by reporting all persons tampering with the lines in their areas.
A week ago, John Ssembatya, the UMEME manager in-charge of Masaka, Lyantonde, Mbarara, Kiruhura and Kisoro zones, in told electricity stakeholders in Masaka district that vandals are currently targeting the newly constructed lines that are yet to be handed over to UMEME by the Rural Electricity Agency-REA.
He pointed out feeder pillars, ring main unit covers, circuit breakers, stay supports, substation fences, underground cables and overhead conductors/wires that are used in iron smelting.
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