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{
"id": 884039,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/884039/?format=api",
"text_counter": 333,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Omogeni",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13219,
"legal_name": "Erick Okong'o Mogeni",
"slug": "erick-okongo-mogeni"
},
"content": "extended to tea farmers in terms of subsidy. Year in, year out, I hear statements from the Government that there will be subsidized fertilizer that will be extended to the maize growing farmers. This is a good thing because we want to have food security and good production on maize, because that is our stable food, but we always forget the tea farmer year in, year out. I have never heard any initiative by the Government of extending subsidized fertilizer to tea farmers. I would propose that when we relook at the functions of the Authority under Clause 5, that is something that we should clearly capture, so that as we support our farmers, who engage in farming of other crops like tea. Madam Temporary Speaker, if you go to these multinational factories and that is where our people work; the people we represent – the common mwananchi – you will find that some of them live in very deplorable conditions. You find that, the owners of the factories and the multinational managers stay in good compounds with electricity, but the workers, who stay in camps, have even been denied basic facilities like electricity. This is an issue of human rights. If you own over 10,000 hectares of tea and you are earning profits that run into millions of shillings, and you have workers, who are facilitating the returns that you are getting; it is only fair and human that you ensure that they live in good conditions. These people have children who go to school but when they come home in the evening to do their homework, they do not have electricity connected to their homes where they live. These are estates that have been constructed by the owners of those multinational companies. How much will it take just to connect power to the workers who are working as tea pluckers for these multinational companies? It is also good that we talk about the welfare of workers in those multinational firms, and this is something that I have seen personally. If you have employed people, it is also important that you ensure that they all have the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) cards, so that you take care health issues. A matter of having a healthy population is a matter of national interest. This time when we are rolling the Universal Health Care (UHC) for all Kenyans, we need to loop in these guys so that they do not mistreat their workers. Some of the things that happen in this part of the world can never happen in places such as the United Kingdom (UK) – the headquarters of some of these multinational companies. There is no way you can have someone working for you and you are not taking care of his or her insurance. So, we need to bring those standards here, so that our people are also treated like human beings. Finally, I have a genuine fear; that unless we protect the small-scale tea farmers, sub-division of land into small, uneconomic units is what poses a big danger to the future of the tea industry in this country. If you go round in Nairobi, some estates like Runda used to be coffee farms. However, because the coffee farmers were not getting good returns, they got tempted into subdividing those parcels of land, uprooting the coffee altogether and converting them into very good upmarket residential estates. Madam Temporary Speaker, we are seeing an upsurge of growth of our economy in many counties. We may have a situation where if we do not have good incentives for farmers, people will be forced to do away with tea farming and go into other incomes like real estate, as it happened in Nairobi. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}