I broke into a cold sweat a few days ago, when I looked at my home electrical wiring system. Do we need to ask about the source of the sudden power cuts and many fires happening in Kinshasa and in the rest of the country?
I should not complain, and I had better think myself lucky and maybe tell myself that having something that looks like a circuit breaker and fuses means progress, because there is nothing similar in most of the neighboring parcels, only a couple of poorly insulated cables wired to the electrical grid directly.
Whenever they are challenged about the large number of power cuts, managers of SNEL protect themselves by rejecting the fault on the population who are making these shaky connections to the grid, thus overloading it. There is no policy for controlling or punishing offenders, but the national electricity board is able to demonstrate its power when requiring the settlement of invoices even though it didn’t supply any power for months.
I hope that all these problems will be resolved with the 5 building sites… In the meantime, all I can do is to pray that there is no short-circuit and especially no fire in my house.
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