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"id": 2269,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/2269/?format=api",
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Keter",
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"speaker": {
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"legal_name": "Charles Cheruiyot Keter",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, thank you for giving me this chance to contribute to this Motion. I want to thank my colleague, Dr. Khalwale, for thinking it wise to have such a Motion at such a time. I want to say that before I joined politics, I was a director of a small-scale tea factory. I became a chairman of a new factory where I resigned immediately I was elected a Member of Parliament for Belgut in 2003. Therefore, with my experience in the tea sector and also being a small-scale farmer, I want to say that this Motion has good intentions. The Kenya Government has been saying that tea is a big foreign exchange earner in this country. But when you see how the small-scale farmers live, it is pathetic. They live in a pathetic situation. Therefore, the Government should take over the loans because KTDA is owned by small- scale tea farmers. They have about 54 factories across the country. All those factories get their loans at commercial rates. There is no involvement of the Government at all. Therefore, when we call upon the Government to write off the loans owed by small-scale tea factories, it is good. It will assist small-scale farmers so that they are also happy. KTDA announced a lot of money in terms of bonus but what goes down to the farmers is peanuts. We have multinationals which are buying tea. M/s Lynton, which is owned by Unilever, is a leading tea buying company. These are well-connected companies. Therefore, the Government should look into ways of assisting the small-scale factories to establish marketing capacity at the source. If tea is packaged at source, the multinational companies that come to buy it will buy it at the source and meet the transportation costs. Right now, all the factories transport the tea to the tea auction in Mombasa at their own cost. Therefore, if the Government can assist and ensure that we have tea auctions in the respective tea producing regions, selling tea will really be of help. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my second point is on sub-division of land. Previously, people used to own between 50 acres and 100 acres of tea crop but right now, with the increase in population, you cannot even have an acre of tea crop. Therefore, if you own an acre of the tea crop and you are supposed to service a loan, with the costs related to equipment having increased tenfold compared to the cost of the same in the 1960s and the 1970s, when all these tea factories were started, production becomes untenable. Therefore, establishing new factories to meet the high demand for tea will really assist, if the Government takes over all the loans. There is another area where the Government has tried but it can do better. The major cost item in all our tea factories is electricity. If electricity is subsidised, small- scale farmers will rejoice. I say so because in my constituency, I have multinational companies producing tea. I have Finlay and Unilever, both of which produce their own electricity. Therefore, as a small-scale tea producer, you cannot compete with multinationals. Unilever generates about two megawatts of power. Therefore, their production costs are low, and they also own the marketing agents, namely M/s Lynton. Therefore, if the Government assists in establishing mini-hydropower stations that can produce between 1 megawatt and 3 megawatts, the cost of electricity, which is the main component of expenditure in the small-scale tea factories, will really be zero. Therefore, I call upon the Government to speed up this initiative. I know that the Government has started doing this in some areas. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I know that there is an ongoing mini-hydro power project, and the initiative should be expanded to other areas, so that we can have many mini-hydro power stations. The river that feeds Sondu Miriu Hydro Power project passes through my constituency. The water goes there and generates about 60 megawatts. We can put up mini-hydro power stations midstream, with a capacity to produce between 10 megawatts and 15 megawatts, all the way down to the Sondu Miriu Hydro Power Station. Those stations will assist small-scale farmers. With those remarks, I beg to support the Motion."
}