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{
    "id": 1147467,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1147467/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 92,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Ndwiga",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 278,
        "legal_name": "Peter Njeru Ndwiga",
        "slug": "peter-ndwiga"
    },
    "content": "Both the Senate and the National Assembly passed those regulations and they are in force. You get surprised when the Cabinet Secretary (CS) in the same Government now wants to go through the backdoor to remove those regulations. It is inconceivable. That is why we have so many problems in this Government. When you have a government whose left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, please do not call that a government that knows where it is going. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, although I am as the Chairperson of the Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, I also happen to be a coffee farmer. We, as coffee farmers of this country, want the Bill that the Senate passed here to be the Bill that will see the light of day. The regulations which we are seeing here and the amendments brought by the National Assembly will not give us that hope. Our main objection to the amendments rests on coffee marketing. That is our main objection. I know that most Senators who are here and who supported the Bill will remember that the coffee farmer has been made a slave of coffee marketers. The people who make money are not the farmers but the marketers. We have had an opportunity as a Committee to visit one marketer in the USA, a roaster called Geoffrey’s in Florida. That roaster told us categorically that they love Kenyan coffee, it is very good, but that it not available. They cannot access it. When they do access it, it is very expensive. He showed us his invoices and receipts. The last time he had bought coffee from Kenya he had paid US$1200 a bag. How much is the farmer getting here? A farmer would be lucky to get US$300 of that same bag. That tells you where the mischief is. I am shocked that a CS in charge of Agriculture and who understands these things would want to introduce amendments to go and kill the same farmer the Government is supposed to protect. It is very inconceivable. This should be condemned by all right-thinking Kenyans. The other thing we have noticed of late is that these marketers have actually put the Government in their pockets. As the CS traverses the country doing his campaigns in coffee growing areas, he tells farmers how the Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries does not understand coffee and how the chairperson, Sen. Ndwiga, is the one stopping coffee reforms. Can you believe this? After the CS in the Government addresses those farmers, he tells them to line up and gives them Kshs1,000 each. Would you believe that? Where else have you ever heard of a CS going out to do his work and afterwards, he gives bribes to the people he was talking to? This is money from the marketers. It is marketers who are using the CS to kill this Bill. These are the same marketers we are asking, we may be at the tail-end of the life of this Senate, but I can assure you, we will be back here again, purposely to pursue some of these things. One of the reasons why the CS should not be allowed to get away with this is because this is going to kill the coffee industry. It is the same reason that has caused the production of coffee to dwindle from 125,000 metric tonnes to less than 30,000 metric tonnes, which we are exporting today. Why? It is because of this kind of behaviour. I hope that whoever advises the President will get this message clearly that the coffee marketers have taken hold of his Government and they have put his Government in their pockets. They want to frustrate coffee reforms through his CS."
}