Keter’s body might be with us, but his mind is in the clouds

Energy Cabinet Secretary Charles Keter this week urged households to consider using electricity to cook to rescue the profit-starved Kenya Power, because the demand for electricity has dropped since Covid-19 docked on our shores.

Kenyans have always suspected our leaders do not live in this country and only fly in once in a while to address the media and, from this statement, Charles Keter seems to have sold out his colleagues.

It has been more than three months since we reported our first coronavirus case and with it a raft of government containment measures that interfered with the cooking patterns and eating behaviour of ordinary Kenyans.

But Charles Keter wouldn’t know this, and you can’t blame him. When you are driven around in government vehicles with heated seats and tinted windows, it becomes difficult to see how ordinary Kenyans are struggling outside here.

The Energy minister, for instance, wouldn’t know that there are Kenyans who only hear about Kenya Power on the radio. They have never been connected to the national grid and the only lines they can relate to are those they use to  hang clothes.

Had Mr Keter bothered to ask his colleagues at the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics first before making that statement, he would have been informed that were the government to collect a shilling for every household that uses electricity for cooking, the money wouldn’t be enough to pay school fees for a child in a government school.

We would have expected the minister to ask himself why Kenyans fear using electricity to cook more than they fear the police, but it turns out he isn’t interested in getting the real answers. But we’ll tell him anyway.

We must begin by congratulating the minister for keeping his well-paying job despite the mass layoffs that have greeted Kenyans since the Covid-19 pandemic came to this country uninvited.

It is no mean feat being able to pay your monthly rent when Kenyans are receiving eviction notices from their landlords, as well as police harassment for being homeless.

We only hope he would show a little empathy for those whose kitchens have gone quiet, and who now live from hand to mouth.

We can only leave it to his conscience to prick him, now that the needle of Covid-19 has failed.

The minister wouldn’t know that the massive job layoffs that came with Covid-19 have forced us to ration electricity use in our homes.

If you had Sh1,000 in a week, would you rather spend it bribing the caretaker not to open the gate for auctioneers coming to pay you an unfortunate visit, or would you buy electricity tokens to make it easier for the advance auctioneering team to monitor your movements so as to know when you’re home?

We are in the middle of a pandemic; you’ve lost your source of income; your food reserves have run out but instead of the minister in charge of electricity asking the government to provide energy relief for those affected by the pandemic, he’s asking Kenyans to use more electricity.

If someone cannot buy food to keep his organs running, he wouldn’t need electricity for cooking, unless the minister is suggesting that we buy electricity to fry oxygen for breakfast, and I cannot remember when flavoured oxygen overthrew maize as our national staple food.

The minister should also be interested to know that even if electricity was to become our main source of cooking fuel, Kenyans would still be forced to keep their gas and charcoal suppliers on speed dial because if you were asked to choose between relying on Kenya Power for electricity and the Jubilee government to buy your Grade One child a laptop, where would you prefer your child’s laptop to be delivered?

If Jesus were to come back today and ask Kenyan Christians why we found it difficult living up to his teachings, we would tell him that we couldn’t walk in the light because Kenya Power signed a coalition agreement with dark forces to play power games with us while he was away.

From the minister’s utterances this week, we are even tempted to conclude that he isn’t aware of the petition by public interest groups to have the Kenya Power servers opened so that Kenyans can finally get to see the faces behind the perennial inflation of our electricity bills.

You cannot inflate power bills and then turn back and ask why Kenyans aren’t using Kenya Power as their preferred cooking provider. If the President wanted an Energy minister who has lost grip with the lived reality of the common man, Charles Keter should know that a wet floor could easily have been hired in his place.

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