Umeme injects Shs80b into meters to check vandalism

Kampala. Power distribution company Umeme has injected $24m (about Shs80b) in installation of advanced systems to check any tampering with electricity meters, especially in industries.
Addressing journalists in Kampala at the weekend, Mr Robert Frederick Mubiru, the project manager, said the advanced metering infrastructure is supposed to guard meters against vandalism in order to provide credible meter readings for billing the customer.
“Previously, we did not have a scientific basis upon which to tell whether a customer was stealing power. We would suspect vandalism and pounce on the premises because some of them would break our meters and remove the seals,” he said, adding that sometimes their own staff collude with clients to cheat the company.
He explained that as a utility company, Umeme’s major asset is the meter because it is considered as their cash register.
It is for this reason that the company has to invest heavily in their integrity so that they appropriately measure the electricity consumed by the customer to improve revenue collections.
According to Mr Mubiru, the new technology enables the company to monitor electricity consumption by remote control because the infrastructure provides real time information on what is happening on the site where it has been installed. It also alerts the area managers and supervisors about the incidents as soon as they occur.

Mode of operation
The meters are manufactured in the United States of America. Unlike the previous ones which needed ordinary keys and padlocks in order to be accessed, the new meters use remote controlled keys which use radio frequencies in order to be accessed. Once accessed, they send Sms alerts to the area manager to alert them about the access and report what is happening on site.