Senator Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot

All parliamentary appearances

Entries 4671 to 4680 of 5232.

• 14 Mar 2019 in Senate: I have listened to the people who spoke today and I have about five or six amendments that I am already considering, based on the contributions, the line of argument and persuasion of colleagues on this issue. Therefore, I wish to thank colleagues who have spoken. I want to assure them that it is not in vain. Tea farmers of this country will benefit immensely when we finish the work on this Bill. 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. view
• 14 Mar 2019 in Senate: I also know that a few colleagues had requested that we postpone debate on this Bill this afternoon because they wanted to contribute. Unfortunately, for one reason or the other, that was not possible. However, I will be reaching out to them to take note of the points of concern that they have and the things they feel we need to do to enrich this Bill. view
• 14 Mar 2019 in Senate: Interestingly, some people who have spoken strongly in an enriching manner come from non-tea growing counties. These are people you will never imagine they even know how a tea plantation looks like but their points have moved me greatly. Life is about learning and getting to know things in a better way. view
• 14 Mar 2019 in Senate: At an individual level, I will take time to respond to each of the Senators on some of the issues that I feel they have not properly understood what we intended to achieve. One of the issues that kept coming up was who represents small-scale farmers. Kenya is among the top ten tea producers in the world. Kenya is unique because for the nine leading tea producing countries of the world, the tea is produced by multinationals. However, in Kenya, 65 to 70 per cent of our tea is produced by small- scale farmers. Therefore, that gives us a very ... view
• 13 Mar 2019 in Senate: Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker. I beg to move that The Tea Bill (Senate Bills No. 36 of 2018) be now read a Second Time. Madam Temporary Speaker, this is a very important Bill to us who come from the tea growing counties. It is a great moment of honour for us to get this opportunity. I would wish to give a brief history of how we got ourselves here. Before the drafting of this Bill, I moved a Motion in this Chamber, where I requested that Senate allows a few of us, Senators, who come from tea growing counties ... view
• 13 Mar 2019 in Senate: research in terms of the viability of different clones of tea and advise farmers for a particular type of soil, this is the kind of tea clone that they are supposed to plant, so that they enjoy maximum yield. They would even do market survey as well and advise the country. Tea is a global business and given the things that are happening world over, you do not want to find yourselves exposed. When you have a good research arm, they should be able to inform you what to do. If Iran, which is one of our strongest tea market, ... view
• 13 Mar 2019 in Senate: challenges that we listened to. Having listened to the marketers, buyers, tea managing agencies, farmers themselves and owners of factories, both public and private, we, as a Committee, retreated and drafted The Tea Bill (Senate Bills No. 36 of 2018). That is the Bill that we are presenting before this House. Madam Temporary Speaker, one of the biggest blunders that ever happened in this country – as I have pointed out earlier – is the amalgamation of the different crops to be managed under one ambit of the Government; or one directorate known as the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA). ... view
• 13 Mar 2019 in Senate: For the record, since the AFA came into place, there has never been a substantial director. You can imagine how Government operates. We are a country that prides ourselves in saying that agriculture is the backbone of our economy, yet for the one body that is supposed to take care of all the crops in the country, for six years, the people that have occupied that office have all been in acting capacity. It is a shame and embarrassing. view
• 13 Mar 2019 in Senate: Madam Temporary Speaker, for those of us who have the interest of tea farmers in our hearts, while you are trying to sort out your issues with sugar, cotton, sorghum and the rest, please, get us out of this place. For many years, tea used to be properly managed. In fact, the offices that AFA continues to use are the offices of the former Tea Board of Kenya (TBK). That tells you how well this crop was managed and how well it was doing. Unfortunately, when we were put together with the rest of the crops in the industry, we ... view
• 13 Mar 2019 in Senate: Madam Temporary Speaker, the radical departure in terms of management of the tea sector that this particular Bill proposes is to get tea as a crop out of the ambit of AFA. Whether there will be a decision later to fold and have different bodies manage themselves that will be a decision for another time. As that is being made, we want to rescue out team farmers. We propose that we get tea out of the ambit of AFA and it be managed by what we are now proposing to be the Tea Regulatory Authority of Kenya (TRAK). It is ... view