Cuts

Safaricom
Last Friday, some post-paid Safaricom customers got a rude shock when their phone lines were cut off for non-payment. For many of them, this was on the day their bills arrived in the mail, or were yet to arrive. The cuts may have been triggered by change in billing system/cycle at Safaricom Usually a reminder is sent out warning the customer that a bill is due, but this time, even the reminders were SMS’d to their phones, after they paid their bills and their lines and been re-connected.

KPLC
I got my electricity bill on Friday, and it was a bit of a shocker.

I had earlier complained about the high bill incurred, for such a small apartment and which was driving me crazy. On some weekends, I had measured every activity e.g. run my laptop or watched TV for an hour, heated water or blended juice – after which I’d run down to the basement and check my 2 meters (electricity & water heater) for the electricity consumed by each action.

My amateur research found that it was the usual suspect – water heater (for showering) that contributed to most of the bill. I then complained to landlord about my meter which I said was faulty and they referred me to KPLC. I turned to KPLC and visited many offices before I reached a helpful manager who eventually sent out a team to verify the accuracy of my meters – which turned out to be ok. That was a few months ago and I have suffered in silence.

Then, in January, we had a change of maid, and the February bill for electricity, which arrived on Friday, was 55% lower than the January bill.

Ceteris paribus (a phrase I have not used since high school), I have to blame the maid. When you have someone, in your house for half the day, and she’s not very forthcoming about what goes on in the 10 hours you’re absent, I have to conclude that perhaps she took too many very long, very hot showers...

UN
It looks like time is up for Kofi Annan after the UN staff union passed a no confidence vote against his plant to overhaul the UN bureaucracy. This was not unexpected since staff are always opposed to changes which involves outsourcing and job cuts.