A Special Feature By Leo Odera Omolo
The government of Kenya is being accused of insincerity in its declared plans to resuscitate the ailing sugar industry. Instead the sugar sub-sector which, is so vital in the country’s economic growth, is said to have been neglected and turned to a milking cow.
A recent tour of the Nyanza sugar belt by the cabinet secretary for agriculture Felor Koskei has provoked sharp criticism of the government whose sincerity to introduce a crash programme for the rehabilitation of the sugar sub-sector is now put into a big question mark.
Koskei announced that five sugar mills which are currently in public investments and under the parastatal management would be privatized soon.
He said the move will be to comply with a resolution passed by parliament in January this year. The five sugar factories included Nzoia, Muhoroni, Sony Sugar, Chemelil and Miwani.
The five sugar companies are heavily indebted to the turned US 525 million with their annual books of account not very attractive.
Koskei issued a directive that sugar cane farmers may now be forced to sell their crops to any millers without zonal restriction. This he said will be on willing seller willing buyer basis.
The cane farmers in Western Kenya through Kenya Sugar Cane Growers Association (KESGA) have reacted angrily and vehemently opposed the new directive.
Sugar cane farmers view the new directive as aimed at protecting the errant millers at the expense of cane growers.
The farmers in the sugar cane growing regions said they have a feeling that if Koskei directive is implemented it will automatically trigger chaos worse than the current pathetic situation in which cane poaching crisis has threatened to cripple the sugar industry.
Koskei, they said has missed the point. How do the farmers who are specifically contracted to sugar companies that had advanced them with millions of shillings in land preparation and development loans deliver their harvests to other millers that did not invest a cent in the same crops development, even if they are offering better terms?
For a farmer too develop an acre of sugar cane from the land preparation to harvesting cost approximately between Ksh. 40, 000 and Ksh. 50, 000 respectively which poor farmer can not afford, hence for partnership with the millers who can only recover their money upon the farmer delivering the cane to the same miller, who had advanced the m with the land preparation and cane development loan.
The government is equally blamed for not having put in place certain binding conditions when signing contract with new investors in the sugar industry especially on issues related to the employment of top management staff in the sugar companies.
There are five privately owned sugar factories which are currently operational. In all the five with the exception of one, Miwani sugar Mills which went burst and presently under the official receivership, all top managers are foreign expatriates recruited from either India or Pakistan.
Local African staff and workers in those factories are only engaged to work as casuals without letters of appointments. Local Kenyans are employed but earning discriminative salary scales in comparison to their foreign counterparts
The expatriate are the one earning the highest salary scales, but not subjected to mandatory deductions such as NSSF and NHIF, while their counterparts (Africans} are forced to pay the mandatory deductions.
Expatriates are employed on petty and odd jobs such as time-keepers, store-keepers, junior account clerks, cane yard clerks, casuals, messengers, accountants, electricians tractor drivers, sweepers etc.
Salaries for the expatriate varied from Kshs 30, 000 up to 80,000 per month. The highest paid African worker earns between Ksh 6000 and Ksh 15, 000 per month, but without being issued with letters of appointment.
In actual sense this is purely case of new slavery when indignant Kenyan workers are being discriminated in their own country.
All the jobs specifications on which foreign workers are doing can easily be filled by local personnel.
Kenya has trained and turned out thousands of skilled workers, in excess of its industrial needs therefore does not require any foreign workers of the above mentioned categories.
The Indian sugar companies, it is being alleged, are said to be spending fortunes in the way of corruptly obtaining the work permit for the expatriate workers, which runs into millions of shillings.
The Indian owned factories incTrans-Mara lude Butali, West Kenya, Kibos Sugar and Allied Industries, Trans Nzoia, Mara Sugar Companies and Miwani Sugar Mills. All are located in Western Kenya.
Some of these rules stipulates among other things that the new mills must be established at a distant of not less than 40 km apart from the existing one, cut the invest must provide to the KSB with evidence that they had acquired enough land acreage for sourcing continued cane supplies to avoid scrambling and cut throat cane poaching.
These r KSB regulations are defiantly and flagrantly ignored by excessively arrogant Indian investors and hence the source of discontent leading to near violence cane poaching that has been witnessed in Western province and in the Nyanza sugar belt and also Awendo sugar cane growing zone which Sony Sugar is violently competing for cane harvesting with Sukari Industries and Trans Mara Sugar Companies as located less than 15 km apart.
ENDS