Musaazi Namiti
UEDCL is still getting its feet under the table, so to speak, given that it took over from Umeme, which has been distributing electricity, only last month. But for many customers — I am one of them — things have gotten off to a bad start. We only hope they will not get worse before they get better.
When Umeme was in charge, the areas of Garuga, Nalugala, Kisubi, Kawuku would experience power outages almost every other day. The outages sometimes lasted more than 48 hours. There is no sign yet that UEDCL will find a solution to this problem in the coming months.
Last week, in our village, we had no electricity for at least four days due to a technical problem that residents reported to UEDCL as soon as it happened.
For many customers in areas with unreliable power supply, a pertinent question remains: how does a company fail to deliver a product for which there is great demand and that people pay for?
It is understandable when start-ups struggle to get off the ground since they may be selling a product for which demand is not certain. But electricity is an essential product used by everyone with money to buy it.
And the billing system is such that you cannot use it before you pay. That means if UEDCL is managed well, it can distribute electricity effectively and ensure every Ugandan gets a reliable power supply. It should know who uses electricity and where. And it should also know when a customer is not using electricity because of a technical problem. Yet as things stand, UEDCL does not seem to have a real-time monitoring system that detects and localises power outages or faults.
When our village was plunged into darkness, I had to phone UEDCL — a waste of time since the caller is told, nine times out of 10, that “all our agents are busy at the moment”. I resorted to X.
While the reply from UEDCL was prompt, the agent was telling me to confirm if the issue had been resolved, yet I had reached out to them for help.
To ensure efficient and effective electricity distribution, UEDCL can learn from countries—developed and developing—that have real-time monitoring systems in place.
The technology is neither futuristic nor expensive.
We are already using smart meters, and UEDCL can use them to send regular user updates to the company or—if the ones we have are not smart enough—introduce meters that can do the job. If a meter suddenly stops reporting, it is a red flag.
Some countries use Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (Scada), which serves as the nerve centre that monitors the grid in real time, especially substations and transformers. If you add Outage Management Systems (OMS), which integrate data from Scada, smart meters and customer reports, you can pinpoint outages.
You do not have to rely on customers reporting problems, as is the practice, and the beauty with this system is that it improves response times and could even cut operational costs.
Building these systems takes time and requires money, which means they cannot be deployed overnight. But UEDCL can roll out the system in phases, starting with Kampala and large towns. And who knows? Maybe the system can make UEDCL’s revenue collection more efficient since smart meters help detect theft and leakages.
When Umeme was in charge, it did not know every customer because some customers colluded with Umeme staff to steal power. It was a sign of incompetence that a company that collected billions of shillings could not even curb power theft. It is early days for UEDCL, but now is the time to put the house in order.
Mr Musaazi Namiti is a journalist and former
Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk
