Electricity disputes tribunal provides platform for fairness

By Ibrahim E. Kasita
Posted 


Monday, January 4 

2016 at 

02:00

The Electricity Disputes Tribunal (EDT) would like to respond to news report, “RDCs, CAOs call for scrapping of electricity disputes tribunal” published in the Daily Monitor of December 2, 2015.
According to the story, participants who attended our consultative workshop in Jinja called for the scrapping of the EDT claiming the tribunal has nothing to show.
Given the impression created by the story, this is to highlight the explain the EDT operations. EDT was established by Section 94, Part XIII of the Electricity Act that was enacted in 1999.

The mandate of the tribunal is to hear and determine all matters referred to it relating to the electricity sector.
The tribunal, therefore, may handle all disputes involving the regulation, generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. Any consumer of electricity or any person who is in anyway aggrieved by any electricity power supply related processes may apply to the tribunal for redress.

Since its inception in 2003, EDT has handled several complaints from the electricity sector that involve sector players, power consumers and the general public. But little was known to the public. The tribunal in its wisdom drew up plans to seeing how best its services could be cascaded further to the people.
This included radio and TV campaigns, which were carried out throughout the country. In doing so, we realised that many of the district and local leaders who would have assisted in the campaign were not aware about the tribunal and its mandate.

Our next intervention was to engage the local leaders at the district level. Several districts consultative meetings involving the LCV chairpersons, CAOs, RDCs, Information officers and Community Development Officers were held. During these meetings, several recommendations were suggested and key among them was that EDT should hold bigger regional forums to discuss how best services could be improved.

The Jinja Consultative Workshop held on November 26, 2015, at the Source of the Nile Hotel was the first of its kind. The main objective was to sensitise stakeholders of the existence of the tribunal, its rules of procedure and generally brainstorming on how best to access its service.
More regional consultative workshops are to be held in other regions of the country in the coming financial year to continue with the sensitisation programmes about EDT.
Ibrahim E. Kasita,
Communication Specialist,
Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development