Ugandans in possession of Yaka meters will have to update them or else they will all stop working this year.
Addressing journalists on Friday, Energy Minister, Ruth Nankabirwa said in May 2020,the Standard Transfer Specification Association (STS Association), the manufacturers of prepaid meters issued a critical notice affecting all STS prepayment meter users including electricity utility suppliers.
“The notice indicated that on 24 November 2024, all prepayment meters based on STS technology will stop dispensing electricity, because each credit token issued to a prepayment meter has a unique token identifier (TID) encoded into 20 digits that needs to be updated,” Nankabirwa said.
To this she noted that the meters will on November, 24 top working unless they are updated.
Nankabirwa however revealed that government has embarked on the process of ensuring all Yaka meters that are held by Ugandans are updated before the due date.
“To prevent this problem from happening, we have set for ourselves a target to have all Uganda’s electricity consumer’s Yaka (prepaid) meters migrated onto the new token identification system by October 2024 to be able to continue purchasing units for their electricity supply seamlessly.There is no need to worry as electricity consumers shall be supported by the distribution utilities to do the migration.”
She said electricity service providers all over the country are now doing all the configurations needed to ensure that meters are calibrated to eliminate challenges on consumers’ side, noting that all Ugandans will be informed on what to do.
“In that regard, we will soon be launching a countrywide media awareness campaign to educate Ugandans about this program. Please cooperate when they reach out to you, but also, be aware of fraud stars who will want to take advantage of this program to steal from you.”
