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Ministry Allowed to Take Over Tea Agency

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Published on Thursday, 26 July 2007 03:37
The Government will take over the running of Kenya Tea Development Agency. Twenty MPs unanimously passed a motion urging the Agriculture minister Kipruto Kirwa to rescind a legal notice which created the agency in 1999. The notice was gazetted by then Agriculture minister Musalia Mudavadi.

This means that the agency that has been operating as a private limited company, will be converted into an authority to be controlled by the Government. Agriculture assistant minister Patrick Muiruri and MPs Jimmy Angwenyi (Kitutu Chache, Ford People), Mwancha Okioma (Kitutu Masaba, Ford People) and Daniel Karaba (Kerugoya/Kutus, Narc) said the move would protect small scale tea farmers against exploitation.

"There are a lot of things going wrong in KTDA but when you raise them, they say they are a limited company. For the Government to pay closer attention to KTDA and address the problems facing small scale tea farmers, the agency must be converted into an authority," said Mr Muiruri. He said the authority was established in 1964 via a legal notice to promote the growth and the marketing of tea in the country until its status changed in 1999.

Mr Muiruri had successfully moved an amendment to a private member's motion by Mr Angwenyi which sought a Bill to amend the KTDA Act. The Bill would provide for direct Government investment to rehabilitate, expand or construct new tea factories.

Mr Muiruri asked the Kitutu Chache MP to, instead, seek a resolution of the House to urge the Agriculture minister to rescind the 1999 legal notice, which transformed the authority into an agency. "This will enable the Government to directly intervene, give soft loans to small scale farmers and put in place infrastructure required for the growth of the crop," the assistant minister noted.

"The Government can only support small-scale tea farmers who are about 12 million in the country," said Mr Angwenyi. Mr Karaba accused KTDA of exploiting farmers with his colleague, Mr Okioma, noting that the requirement by KTDA for growers to provide Sh200 million for building factories was uncalled for.