By a Special Correspondent

CHEMELIL Sugar Company, which for many years used to be one of the most vibrant and efficiently managed sugar producing mills in the country is ailing and headed for a total collapse.

It owed its raw cane suppliers millions of shilling in unpaid bill for the cane delivered to the facility during the months of March, April and this month, forcing the cane farmers to divert their cane from its growing zones to other factories.

The Company has yet to pay its senior staff and mangers, their salary for the month of April. It has, however, paid the laborers and the junior staff on fears of facing possible strike and demonstration protests.

It has had a change of guard in recent months, which saw the long serving agricultural manager Charles Owelle a Luo from Ugenya being confirmed as the new managing director .He replaced the former MD Eng.Edwin Otieno Musebe, a hard working Luhyia man who had turned around and steered the hitherto run-down facility.

Musebe’s unceremonious removal was both tribally and politically motivated, which saw members of the local Luo community had ganged up and they did everything possible including the staff sabotaging of the mechanically ailing factory, which has had no annual mechanical maintenance running into several years.

Politically Eng. Musebe was viewed to be leaning to the former Minister for Agriculture now the MP for Eldoret North William Ruto, while the local workers and many staff wanted the facility to be managed by a Luo who is allied to the Prime Minister Raila Odinga and the ODM.

They did this to the chagrins of the sugar cane farmers who had very cordial and warm relations with the company during highly profiled skills during Musebe’s managerial prowess. That saw the local cane farmer getting paid for their cane delivered to the facility n monthly basis.

THE former chairman of the company’s board of directors Dr M Mining, a Kalenjin was replaced by Ms Margaret Chemengich a fellow Kalenjin who is a retired former Permanent Secretary.

The abrupt change of top management after the Ministry had refused to renew the contract of the former MD was expected to bring in some skills an efficiency in the management of the facility, which is based in Muhoroni district in the region classified as the Nyanza Sugar-belt, but it has made it the worse instead.

According to unsigned and anonymous documents circulating within Chemelil and Muhoroni towns, the company sale of made sugar indicated that the firm sold 30,000 50kg bags at Kshs 4000 each earning Kshs 120 million, but still could not meet its financial obligations. Where this money did goes to?

By the end of April the Kenya Power and Lighting Company Limited {KPL} was owed Kshs 30 million unpaid for power bills. This forced the company temporarily disconnect the power supply to the factory last week. However, it later restored the supply following the intervention of by the higher authorities on fears that plunging the facility into to total darkness would pave the way for criminal minded people to vandalize its property.

The cane farmer have yet to be paid for the cane delivered and crushed in the facility between the month of March, April and this month amounting to a total of Kshs 114 millions.

The employees ha received their salary in March and had been warned in a circular that their salary for April would be affected much later. The pay bill is amounting to Kshs 20 million.

Mandatory deductions from the employee’s salary had yet to be remitted to the relevant authority such as NSSF and NHIF. This has now hit the Kshs 14.4 million in arrears. Medical cards covering the employee’s medical schemes are no longer valid and the employees cannot use them, to access medication.

For the rehabilitation of the mill, the company is believed to have received close to Kshs 340 million from the Kenya Sugar Board, but experts says this amount is inadequate taking into account that the mill had gone for years without its annual maintenance. It is now experiencing persistent mechanical breakdown thereby drastically reducing its production capacity.

The frequent breakdowns and the scarcity of raw cane had also drastically reduced the company revenue base. The employees were recently disturbed and disillusioned when they heard that the company had planned to take 18 of its senior managing staff an 11 members of the board of directors for a couple of day retreat to Sarova Lions Hotel in Nakuru.

The retreat was supposed to have taken place around May 8 to May 11th. But both farmers and the workers alike say there is nothing to celebrate while the financially ailing government wholly-owned firm is still facing myriads of problems.

Unconfirmed reports say that Chemelil Sugar Company might have lost between 400 and 400 million shillings between October last following the change of guard to date and due to poor management of its resources.

The local farmers have placed the blame squarely at the doorsteps of the parent Ministry of Agriculture whose some of the officials are being accused of collaboration with inefficient m one on political an tribal considerations

Bothe the new MD Charles Owelle and the Company’s public relations man Bosco Magare could not be reached for their immediate comment. Effort to trace them were fruitless

Ends