Business Feature By Leo Odera Omolo in KERICHO Town.
The Te industry, which of late has become Kenya’s golden cash crop is facing a bleak future as the senior politicians in the South Rift region where the crop is grown in abundance have of late turned the heat on the British owned multinational manufacturing companies.
Tea is now the country’s golden cash crop because it is fetching billion of shillings in the much scarce foreign exchange for the country. The industry, however is facing a lean time due to several factors, which include the wanton destruction of Mau Forest Complex, which is one of the country’ major water tower, and recent wave of political agitation over the ownership of land on which the tea bushes stands in three administrative district of Kericho, Bureti, Bomet and Sotik.
The effect of Mau Forest destruction is felt a far field as well as in the South and Central Nandi districts where there also large scale tea plantations and processing factories are also located.
In the South Rift region where tea is grown in abundance, and where most of the large plantation owned by foreign multinational companies and green leaves processing factories are based is currently facing fresh waves of politically motivated attacks.
These attacks are bad for the future of this highly lucrative industry. This is so because the industry has employed a combined labor of force of over 40,000 thousands people. These threats of possible eviction of the investors from their property, though looking rather insignificant, but have the potential danger of scaring away investors in this important sector of Kenya’s economy.
The leaders mainly from the populous Kipsigis community have increasingly agitated and adopted tough stand. They are questioning the legitimacy of close to 100 year land leases for the tea farms.
The leaders are not comfortable with the information available, which states that the thousands of fertile land on which tea bushes stand were dished out to the pioneer white settlers on 999 year leas instead of the usually acceptable 99 years.
These leaders have targeted the two multinational tea companies, namely Finlays Tea and Flower Company{formerly the Africa Highlands Produce Company Ltd} a company with its origin in Scotland in the UK, and the Unilever Corporation Ltd, {formerly Brooke Bond Tea Company ltd}. The two multinational firms owned close to 40 large tea plantations and over thirty tea processing factories, scattered in Kericho, Bureti, Bomet and Sotik districts.
And while these multinational tea companies owned by foreign investors, mainly British entrepreneurs, are feeling the heat of incessant scathing criticism by local politician and community leaders, the environmentalists experts have predicted that as the result of wanton destruction of Mau Forest Complex and human encroachment to the water catchment areas is likely going to have a devastating effect on tea farming in the region.
A damning report recently compiled and handed to the Prime Minister Raila Odinga detailing the wanton destruction of the Mau, Kenya’s largest water catchment area s bleak.
Report has yet to be made public, but members of the Task Force that prepared the report say th forest has lost hundreds of thousands of acres of trees, with devastating impact on the tea industry in th South Rift region.The effect of the destruction of forest is also likely to have negative impact on tea crop in the South Rift and in a fa field as south, Central and north Nandi ditricts.
A scientist employed as a technicaldirecto0r of one of the biggest tea companies in East Africa has expressed fears that continued destruction of the Mau Complex could lead to the firm abandoning tea production altogether.
“If the Mau Complex disappears, I don’t think we can grow tea in this area any more,”said Mr Hugo Douglus-Dubresne, the technical director of James Finlays Tea Company in Kenya.
Globally Finlays produces about 45 million kilos of made tea each year with Kericho-based outfit producing 23 million kilos annually and employing about 34,000 people.
“The tea require regular rainfall and dies out whenever rain fail. The combination of the prevailing prolonged drought and the dwindling of the Mau Forest Complex is affecting tea production increasingly and negatively.”says the expert.
And for the first time, the region witnessed some of the harshest comments about the tea industry by politician in the South Rift. These comments were characterized with the condemnation of the multinational tea com0-panies in the region, and were unleashed before a capacity crowd of Kipsigis people and their leaders wh0 attended the home-coming party for the Buret MP Franklin Bett at Kor9ngoi School in Bureti district. Bett is the Minister for Roads.
These harsh public pronouncement against the multinational tea companies were mad in the presence of the Prime Minister Raila Odinga, the man who is crusading for the conservation and preservation of the important Mau Complex, which is an important water tower in Kenya.
The first salvo was fired by the Assistant Minister for Energy Charles Keter who charged that James Finlays Tea and Flower Company, a British firm was behaving badly
And when it come the turn of the Road Minister Franklin Bett to address the gathering, he too scathingly attacked Finlays Tea Company and warned the multinational tea companies operating in the region to tread carefully.
It would not escape the intelligent guesswork of the observers the senior mot Kipsigis politicians were linking the impending Mau Forest eviction of illegal squatter, of mostly member of the Kipsigis community to the compulsory land acquisition by the colonialists to plant tea bushes that led to the current sh0rtage of land for the indignant people of the region.
It became obvious that many people, including the local leaders were dispossessed of their ancestral land. The Kipsigis people were forced to move into the same-arid in strange villages in Bomet and Chepalungu. This was the reason that forced them to move into the forest in search of green pasture for the livestock and arable fertile land for cultivation of domestic food crops
“It should be made categorically to the owners of the tea companies that the land on which tea bushes are planted was forcefully grabbed by colonialists from its rightful owners, the Kipsigis sub-clans, and that the families of those affected have not been settled or compensated,” Minister Bett said.
Finlays Tea company was also accused for rushing int9 mechanized tea plucking system that would see more than 3,000 workers being declare redundant and for the hiring of senior expatriates to replace the local experts seemed to have irked both Bett and Keter.
“These tea plucking machines will render many workers in the tea plantations redundant because most of the will not have met their target by 11.am, when plucking gren leaves manually stops, the Assistant
According to the year 2006 statistics released by the Kericho based Tea Growers Association of Kenya {KTGA} the tea companies have combined labour force of 40,000.
The Kipsigis leaders have also expressed their vehement opposition of the 999-year land leased, which is being enjoyed by the foreign owned multinational tea companies. They also faulted Finlays Tea Company for hiring foreigners for simple duties that could be competitively undertaken by the Kenyans.
The leaders claimed that sections in the company’s key management positions are held by expatriate. The company, they said, is flouting the immigration regulations by hiring more ten expatriates to run key sectors of production as if Kenya is short of qualified personnel to run those sectors.
Finlays company has recently introduced stavia plant into it its least of cash crops and this would offer more jobs opportunity for locals, says one of the coim0any’s operational directors. Defended his com0any saying it was law abiding and operating within the laid down laws of Kenya.
These kind of tough talking by the local leaders are only serving to scare the investors away, particularly the potential foreign investors. Tea is an important sector of the economy.
These remarks implies that thousands of the close to 20,000 families living in the Mau Forest are people who were made landless by the colonialists who took away their land forcefully and handed it to the white settlers who in turn invented tea plantation in the region at the opening of the 20th Century. Tea planting in the South Rift began in earnest in 1909 and the full production started between 1920 and 1922.
The recent remarks not lost to political pundits that the Kipsigis leaders were only amplifying the relationship between land grabbing by colonialists to increase space for tea plantation and encroachment of the Mau Forest by the Kipsigis families.
And the last week,the Wildlife and Forest Minister Dr Noah Wekesa added his weight to the controversial Mau Forest issue when he scathingly criticized an unnamed South Rift MPS who he accused of frustrating the government efforts to restore the Mau Complex.
And the fact that the Minister in-charge of the Forest chose not to name the deserting local leaders is a clear indication that the fate of Mau Complex will be determined politically and not by executive proclamations.
The Prime Minister Raila Odinga made a juicy statement when he assured the local community that he would not carry out an exercise that would hurt them.
The two issues of multinational tea comp0sny,lsndlessness in Kipsigis region and the conservation of Mau Forest Complex definitely feature prominently in the year 2012 general elections. This is because the Kipigis leaders seemed to have dug themselves in ready for confrontation with the government over the three contentio9usisues.
Ends
leooderaomolo@yahoo.com

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Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 04:50:06 -0700 [04/01/2009 06:50:06 AM CDT]
From: leooderaomolo@ . . .
Subject: THE FUTURE OF THE TEA INDUSTRY IN SOUTH RIFT IS LOOKING BLEAK AS LEADERS TURN THE HEAT ON FOREIGN OWNED MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES