Writes Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City.
CHEMELIL Sugar Company Limited, the wholly state owned sugar manufacturing company based in Muhoroni district within the Kisumu County has ground its production to a halt.
The company owed its suppliers cane farmers, worker and other stakeholders close to Kshs 2 billion.
Its employees estimated to be numbering about 850 have yet to be paid their salaries since December,2012 last year. This has exposed these workers to extreme suffering starvation and diseases as the can no longer afford to cater for themselves and their families or pay for their medical bills due to lack of money.
Unconfirmed reports say one worker had died of what his workmates have described as caused by extreme starvation and hunger. The body of the deceased whose name was given as Walter Marega is still lying at the morgue in hospital.
The facility, which for many years ever since its inception was the centre of excellence, and the mainstay of sugar production within the Nyanza sugar belt has been run-down owing to what an insider has described as “gross political interference” into its day-to-day management, corruption, and “pilferage with impunity.”.
Although aware of the tremendous suffering of the employees of the facility the political leadership in the region couldn’t care less and made no effort to install the sanity in the once vibrant and prosperous sugar industry management.
Human Rights groups and NGOs operating in the area have raised an alarm about the pathetic state of affairs at the Chemelil sugar company to no avail.
The current managing director of the Chemelil sugar Company is Charles Owelle, a man who has for many years been involved in its previous management team, which were discredited with numerous allegations of looting and excessive pilferage and vandalism of the firm’s resources.
Owelle, a Luo, took over from Eng. Edwin Otieno Musebe, a Luhyia, whose concerted effort had turned the facility around from being run-down to a vibrant profit making firm. His removal was viewed as having been instigated by excessive tribalism. Owelle by then was the company’s agricultural manager and had even twice before acted as an interim MD.
The company’s debts have increase to about Kshs 2 billion The most affected groups are the suppliers, cane farmers and the 850 workers who have not been paid their salaries since August 2012 and are still living in squalid conditions in their dilapidated houses while penniless and suffering not to be able to cater for their basic needs such as food and school fees for their school going children.
Sugar can farmers and other stakeholders have also not been paid their dues since last year either the Kenya Sugar Board doing the reportedly never ending annual mechanical maintenance since last year has also been informed of the extreme difficulties the stakeholders were undergoing, but has done nothing.
Other reports emerging from the facility says that on the night of Friday March 15, 2013 an employee of the company by the name Walter Marega had complained to his neighbor about extreme hunger and starvation he was experiencing.
A generous neighbor sympathized with Mr Marega voluntarily offered to take him to a food kiosk in the nearby market so that he could get some porridge. The deceased then went to the estates shop to look for some eggs, but he got nothing because he had exhausted all his credit facilities. All this happened while the late Mr. Marega’s wife had given birth to a new born baby at Nambale hospital. A neighbor offered him 500/- loan to enable him to travel to Nambale, but the same night Marega died lonely inside his company estate house even before seeing his new born baby.
The recent change in political patronage of Muhoroni in which the former immediate MP or the are Prof.Ayiecho Olueny was voted out an a new MP elect James Onyango Koyoo voted in has given the residents, especially members of the farming community the ray of hope that things could change to the better.
Ends