Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 219794,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/219794/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 248,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Mwancha",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for the five minutes. I wish to join all the hon. Members who have supported hon. Angwenyi for bringing the Motion to the House. Many times, I have said in this House that tea farmers still have their tea because it is a perennial crop. If it was an annual crop, they would have pulled it out. They are paupers. They have nothing to make from their tea farms. Establishing tea farms is very expensive. They have to build the factories and like hon. Members have said, in some cases, they have to construct roads. I will leave that issue and deal with the manner which I think hon. Angwenyi should have brought this Motion. It should have been on expansion, rehabilitation, construction, development and more importantly, the marketing aspect of the tea. It costs Kshs400 million to do one line. To do three lines, it would cost Ksh1.2 billion. It is unthinkable for the Government to expect farmers to raise Kshs1.2 billion to construct a factory. They would have to go for financing elsewhere and interest rates are heavily inflated. Hon. Khamasi has given an example of an incident where farmers were asked to raise Kshs500,000 million while it cost less than Kshs200 million to construct a factory. We need Government intervention and financing, so that factories can be built. The Government should also put in place the required machinery to add value. We do not want to add value and leave it at that. We would like to know if we are selling our tea in supermarkets in South America. We should print the packets and even the price tags here in Kenya. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with regard to marketing, we have seen that Lipton has been given the authority to market our tea. They only re-package and then sell our tea in the world market. If the Government financed the factories, they could be able to market our own tea. When you travel around the world, you find tea from Sri Lanka and India. It is only Kenyan tea which is sold as Lipton tea. The Assistant Minister for Agriculture was with me in the Departmental Committee on Agriculture, Lands and Natural Resources. We travelled a great deal with him and we saw Kenyan tea packed as Lipton tea in the world and tea from Sri Lanka, India and other countries packed as tea from those countries. Our tea should be packed as Kenyan tea, so that if buyers want Kenyan tea, they will come here. They should not go to Lipton. I hope the Minister will take a cue from this Motion and have our tea packed and sold as Kenyan tea, which is high quality tea. The Kenyan tea farmers should also earn a premium after their tea is used to blend poor tea from Asia. That is the only way to help the tea farmers, so that when they walk at night from the tea buying centres back to their homes to eat, they will not be called night runners. With those many remarks, I beg to support."
}