The Minister of Energy and Mineral Development, Ruth Nankabirwa, at a press conference at Uganda Media Centre, on Friday said the use of yaka meter will come to an end this year in October. 

Without giving reasons for the change, Nankabirwa said the prepaid meters will be migrated onto the New Token Identification System so that electricity users are able to continue purchasing Units for their Electricity Supply seamlessly.

However, the minister using social media has come out to explain why the prepaid meters are being phased out. She explained that on 22nd May 2020, the Standard Transfer Specification Association (STS), 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,” she said.

“The current TID in all prepaid meters in the electricity, water, and gas utilities business is referenced to a base date of 1993 and will run out of range in November 2024, thus causing the prepayment meter to stop accepting new tokens,” she added. 

While at Uganda Media Centre on Friday, the minister said this change is happening on a global scale and will affect all consumers on the Prepayment Metering system.