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{
    "id": 1565402,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1565402/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 87,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Omogeni",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13219,
        "legal_name": "Erick Okong'o Mogeni",
        "slug": "erick-okongo-mogeni"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, last year, a night guard was attacked and killed by thieves who were stealing coffee from Eyaka Coffee Society. As I speak today, the person or persons who attacked have not been arrested to date. We also need to understand that the environment under which we process and store our coffee exposes our farmers to a lot of risk. I would want the Government to step in and assist these farmers. Some of the societies have loans that have been outstanding for many years. Any time they make good earning, their money goes to repaying their loans. I hope the Government can step in and help. Some of the proposals in this report from the National Assembly are hard to understand. Surely, why does the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) want to come in to set the sitting allowances for members of coffee societies? I mean, we are overstretching the mandate of the SRC. The SRC wants to come to Nyamira to sit in North Mugirango, Kitutu and West Mugirango to tell farmers what their sitting allowance should be. You can set a sitting allowance that the farmers will never afford. The allowance should be commensurate to the earnings of the farmers from that coffee society. You do not set a blanket sitting allowance. Maybe farmers in Embu County make more money and they want to pay their directors a sitting allowance that cannot be matched by farmers in Nyamira. If you make good money there, pay them more. If we are not able to make good money in Nyamira, we want to save on the allowances we pay to our directors. I do not agree with this proposal that the SRC should now come in meddling and say they are the ones setting allowances for farmers. I hope the Members who will go to do mediation will strike off that amendment. It appears as if our brothers in the National Assembly do not live in our counties, where we come from. This is something they should be able to understand. The SRC will think a board member attending a meeting should be paid Kshs25,000. If you pay a director for four months, you will wipe out the earnings from the cooperative society. So, let that be a matter that will be dealt with by the farmers themselves. They will see the earnings from that society and then decide the remuneration they are going to give their directors. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I like this idea of value addition. We have spoken about value addition for ages. Sen. Cherarkey, I was in Uasin Gishu County on Friday. I went to take a cup of coffee. Do you know how much I was charged? Now, you want to pay farmers in Nyamira Kshs239 per kilogramme of dry coffee and yet a cup of coffee is Kshs350 in Eldoret City, in Uasin Gishu County, which is not even the Capital City of Nairobi. I paid Kshs350 for a cup of coffee. Eldoret City is a nice, beautiful city. However, the farmer who produced the coffee for a whole kilogramme, ile goro goro, is earning Kshs239. We are not being fair to our farmers. One kilogramme should fetch more than Kshs1,000. How many cups of coffee will one kilogramme produce? Many! That small sachet is the one that is making me to pay Kshs350---"
}