Mr John Numamanya, a Umeme metering technician, shows a pre-paid meter that had been tampered with. PHOTO BY S. OTAGE
In Summary
Speaking to public relations practitioners and professionals about the company’s operations in Kampala last week, Mr John Nuwamanya, a metering technician at Umeme, said most pre-paid meters that have been tampered with belong to large industrial consumers who use a lot of power
Power company Umeme Limited, has said manufacturers are the biggest culprits of a wave of vandalism targeting its pre-paid electricity meters that were installed around the country recently.
Speaking to public relations practitioners and professionals about the company’s operations in Kampala last week, Mr John Nuwamanya, a metering technician at Umeme, said most pre-paid meters that have been tampered with belong to large industrial consumers who use a lot of power.
These, he said, tamper with the meters to try and maximise profits but instead end up paying fines for fraud.
“The biggest culprits are the grain and maize millers. The others are processing factories that put foreign components on the meters to disturb accuracy of readings, meter bypass, some install resistors and capacitors on the meters,” Mr Nuwamanya said.
He added that other forms of meter tampering include installation of wrong programmes on the meters so that they post wrong readings yet power is being consumed.
“We have found cases where meters are set to take wrong meter readings yet power is being consumed and sometimes the meters have been bypassed so that they do not reflect any power consumption at all,” he said.
Robert Tugume, another metering technician within the department said most of the culprits have been duped to tamper with the meters by former Umeme employees who were sacked from the company over such fraud claiming that they can help the customers save on power consumption by tampering with the units.
“We know all the culprits but being an ISO registered company, we are not allowed to name them in the press,” he said when pressed to name the culprits.
Asked what why they are not prosecuting the culprits, Umeme head of corporate affairs Henry Rugambwa said the main challenge Umeme faces is lack of an appropriate legislation because after paying the fine, the culprits have to be reconnected.
user-friendly yaka
Since 2014, Umeme embarked on replacement of all its post-paid electricity meters with Yaka – the pre-paid meters that were widely publicised as user-friendly and were hoped to help the company reduce power losses due to electricity theft.
However, just like it is done with water, it appears users who own properties that consume a lot of electricity, have continued to lead the pack of power thieves, cheating the wider public of the coveted public utility services.
sotage@ug.nationmedia.com
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