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{
    "id": 1157556,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1157556/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 304,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the lack of Sugar Board that used to make timely interventions in terms of extending credits to sugar millers, to out grower organizations as and when they were having financial stress has seen the death of Mumias Sugar Company. Mumias Sugar Company was the jewel of rural industrial investment and success in Kenya and in this region. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, in fact, many times Mumias Sugar when it was under the management of Booker Tate International was always referred to as a success story in the entire Commonwealth countries. Today, Mumias is a ruin. The nucleus of Mumias, our ancestral land, is now a free for all grazing ground. You find villagers quarreling on who grazes where on what was otherwise a premier production land. Down Mumias went, with thousands of jobs and millions of livelihoods frustrated and denied a direct and indirect living. It is now derelict. When the Kenya Kwanza comes in place, we will revive it and give the people of Western region their jewel back. We have Nzoia Sugar Company in Bungoma that is on life support for the last many years. You cannot get intervention because the Sugar Development Levy in which farmers and millers money was put, including money levied from sugar importers, is unavailable. They cannot constantly get money for routine maintenance, upgrading their fleets and buying ploughing tractors for the Mumias Out-Growers Company Limited (MOCO) and the Nzoia Out-Growers Company Limited (NOCO). They cannot provide alternative cheap transport for farmers to transport their cane from the farms to the factories. They cannot dream of farm gate weighing of their produce so that the farmer can pass the risk to the miller at the farm gate. All this is happening because we have for the last ten years been in a legal wilderness with no legal framework to manage this sector. On the return of the Sugar Board, I have a little issue with the membership. However, I want to point out to Senator Farhiya that sugar is in the agriculture sector which is almost 100 per cent devolved. If you are putting on the Sugar Board, the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, it is equally important that you do not just say that “there will be a person nominated by the Council of Governors (CoG) who is knowledgeable in extension services.” You should have an equivalent of a PS who is the Chief Officer (CO) in one of the sugar production counties. It should be, probably, agreed upon by the CoG that if one serves from Bungoma this term, the next one can serve from Migori and the third one from Narok on a rotational basis. This is so that when you have the PS that will help formulate policy that is friendly to sugar production, the counties should also have an equivalent mirrored in the Sugar Board that will also bring special attention from counties on what kind of synergies need to be pooled together between the counties and the national Government to improve the sector. Therefore, in Clause 6(1)(e), we do not just say vaguely that a person nominated by the CoG. They could very well nominate a person who has absolutely no interest, who does not even live in the regions that produce sugar and who will not carry sufficient responsibility. The CoG has sectoral groupings of County Executive Committee Members (CECMs) and Chief officers of particular sectors. When you have one of those, then there"
}