NAIROBI, KENYA: The Kenya Power has appointed five new directors to its board replacing the team that quit last week Monday.

Among the new board members include industrialist Sachen Gudka, who recently served as the chairman Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM).

The new board members are drawn from different fields including the upstream oil industry, legal services, and banking.

“The board of KPLC announces the appointment of Eng Abulrazaq Ali, Eng Elizabeth Rogo, Caroline Kittony-Waiyaki, Vivienne Yeda, and Sachen Gudka as non-executive directors of the company,” said a statement by Kenya Power’s company secretary Imelda Bore.

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The new team joins Mahboub Maalim (chairperson), Bernard Ngugi (chief executive), Ukur Yatani (CS Treasury), Joseph Njoroge (PS Energy), and Imelda Bore (company secretary) that were left on the board after the resignation of the independent directors. Beatrice Gathirwa and Isaac Kiva are alternates to the CS Treasury and PS Energy.

They will be replacing Adil Khawaja, Kairo Thuo, Wilson Kimutai Mugung’ei, Brenda Kokoi, and Zipporah Kerring who resigned from the board last week under unclear circumstances with some saying they had been pushed out.
The newly constituted board will be expected to play part in turning around the fortunes of Kenya Power, which have been dwindling over the past few years.

The firm recently issued a profit warning for the third year in a row. It expects that profit for the year to June 2020 will fall by at least 25 per cent. The coronavirus pandemic, while not entirely to blame for the firm’s misfortunes, resulted in a decline in the amount of power consumed by industries owing to containment measures such as the dusk to dawn curfew that has since been extended.

The pandemic resulted in the power distributor incurring a revenue loss of Sh5.6 billion over the April-June quarter, according to the Ministry of Energy, high defaults among customers whose earnings have been affected by the pandemic.

KPLC’s profit after tax dipped by 92 per cent for the financial year ending June 30, 2019. Net profit fell to Sh260 million in the year to June 2019 from Sh3.3 billion reported in the previous financial year.