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{
    "id": 980730,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/980730/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 341,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kericho CWR, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Ms.) Florence C.K. Bore",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 639,
        "legal_name": "Florence Chepngetich Koskey",
        "slug": "florence-chepngetich-koskey"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, for giving me this opportunity. I come from a tea growing area and I want to thank the Senator for Kericho for bringing this Bill. I support it plus the amendments that will come towards it. I want to say that this is a Bill that people from the tea-growing areas are looking forward to. They want answers and better prices for tea like before. Farmers are suffering and cannot pay school fees for their children. They cannot pay for their medical bills. Like what my colleagues have said, we need answers like yesterday. We need improved prices for tea. The KTDA needs to be restructured. We need to review its contracts with farmers. Farmers have been exploited through levies levied on tea. The levies should be reduced. There are also projects that have been started by the KTDA across the tea growing areas which take up a lot of money from tea farmers. The projects need to be reviewed, so that we do not burden farmers by taking away their earnings from tea. We also need to protect farmers from the unpredictable market by ensuring that they get prices that cover the high costs of production. We can do this through a fund that can support the farmers and even create a minimum price guarantee when the world market prices go down. This will assure farmers of good prices or a minimum price guarantee. These small-scale farmers own tea factories which should be giving them some dividends. Farmers do not get dividends from the factories. The KTDA has properties even in the City of Nairobi, but farmers earn nothing from these properties. The KTDA has buildings in Nairobi and I am sure they get earnings from the buildings and nothing is given to a farmer. I also want to touch on corruption that could be going on at the KTDA and within the agencies, the factories and even within the collection centres. We have heard of weighing scales being doctored to reduce the kilogrammes of tea the farmer has produced. If a farmer gives out 10 kilogrammes of green tea, he is weighed for at seven kilogrammes. Where does the three kilogrammes go to? That is corruption. The farmer is not being given his rightful kilogrammes because the weighing scales have been doctored."
}