Reports Leo Odera Omolo In Kericho
The Kipsigis leaders are up in arms against what they have described as secret dismantling of machinery at the 50 year old Kenya Tea Packers Association {KETEPA} by the directors of the Kenya Tea Development Agency {KTDA}.
Previously known as the Central Packing Plant, the facility was built by the Broke Bond Tea Company Limited in 1949. The same company established a big printing press in an adjacent building in 1950 in order to cut down the cost of packaging materials printed with the company logo and colors.
But when the Brooke bond sold its tea plantations and close to twenty tea plantation estates and more than a dozen of green tea leaves processing factories in the early 1970s to the Unilever Company, it also offloaded the Central Packing, which was sold to the KTDA and individual investors.
Prior to the new arrangement, the Central Packing was the main tea packers in the entire Eastern African region receiving tea of packaging from as far field as Uganda and Tanzania under Broke Tea business flagship of Brooke Bond Equatorial Ltd and later Brooke Bond Liebig Company Limited.
A couple of years ago the company’s printing complex, the most ultra modern Printing plan in this region were secretly dismantled in mysterious circumstances and its machines shipped away to unknown destination.
It was late rumored that the printing machines were sold to an Asian business tycoon, whose firm that Ketepa management later contracted for printing of its packing materials.
But things turned out to be the worse after the 2008 post election violence. The KDA directors were reported to b unhappy that Ketepa workers and staff were getting politically motivated threats and intimidation and a decision was made to have the facility closed down and its machines moved to a safe site in Ketengela, Nairobi and Thika Town.
Our investigations has revealed that 80 per cent of the Ketepa workers and staff including top managers were local people, the majority who are commuting to work from the nearby Kipsigis reserves therefore the question of the allegation that the company workers were being threatened does not arise and sounded like fiction.
A prominent Kipsigis farmer-cum-politician Mr William Kipkemoi Arap Kettienya termed the KTDA move of relocating Ketapa as an economic sabotage against the local community and another way of marginalizing the community. Such a move would obviously deny the locals the employment opportunities, which they have been enjoying ever since the facility was established over 50 years.
Kettienya blamed the MPs fro the two Counties of Kericho and Bomet of keeping silent while the dismantling of Ketepa facility is going on. He said the building which used to house its packaging machineries is now an empty cell and the MPs from the region should stand up and put the KTDA directors to task.
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