Roads and Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen now says the issue of embarrassing perennial power blackouts at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) has been resolved.
In a statement on Monday night, the CS assured that the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) leadership had replaced key systems at the airport to allow a seamless transition to backup power during blackouts.
The CS made the remarks after a meeting with senior officials of KAA and Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) on the improvements being undertaken at JKIA “to ensure it lives up to its billing as an airport of international repute.”
“KAA leadership has assured me that issues of blackouts at JKIA are now a thing of the past after they replaced time-based system with logic-based system that will allow seamless transition to backup power during blackouts,” Murkomen stated.
The CS also revealed that manual interventions have also been put in place, faulty control systems rectified, cabling system expanded, and inverters installed to avert blackouts at the airport by allowing a 15-second transition time.
The meeting was attended by Transport Principal Secretary Mohamed Daghar, KAA Acting Managing Director (MD) Henry Ogoye, KCAA MD Emile Arao, and Director Air Transport Nicholas Bodo, among others.
JKIA was plunged into darkness on December 10 after two generators failed to activate following a national power blackout.
This was the third incident to be witnessed at the airport in the last three months, sparking protests from the general public over the competence of the management of the key state facility.
Kenya Power, on its part, attributed the blackout to a system disturbance on the national grid.
A blackout experienced at JKIA on August 25 saw KAA Managing Director Alex Gitari and General Manager Project and Engineering Services Fred Odawo dismissed following a similar outrage from members of the public.
