Nyeri Senator Ephraim Maina has supported Raila Odinga’s calls to have the Kenya Tea Development Agency audited citing mismanagement.
Maina said tea growers continue to suffer in the hands of the authority and KTDA should be subjected to financial scrutiny by the Auditor General.
Speaking at his Capitol Hill offices on Wednesday, Raila asked Parliament to come up with legislation to end the monopoly of the KTDA.
He called for an urgent forensic audit at the KTDA board, which he said has clung to power since 2000, despite mismanaging the industry.
"This is a shocking story that requires urgent intervention. We are losing tea to corruption and mismanagement," Raila said.
The former Prime Minister said due to mismanagement in the tea industry, many farmers are uprooting the crop.
"This is how the collapse of the coffee sector started," he said, adding that the financial stability of farmers is threatened with a majority drowning in debt.
"We risk losing the country's top foreign income earner unless urgent action is taken at the top leadership of KTDA," he added. Raila urged the DCI to urgently probe the issues at the agency.
And during an interview with the Star on Friday, the senator said drafting of a bill aimed at curtailing the powers of KTDA and handing over management of the tea sector to farmers is at an advanced stage.
“Tea farming has taken the same route the coffee industry took 20 years ago. Today, coffee farming is dead and sadly tea farming is headed in the same direction,” Maina said.
He said frustrations by farmers have led to the uprooting of hundreds of tea bushes in favour of other crops. “Raila was very right when he said KTDA is no longer serving the interests and objectives of farmers and, therefore, the urgent need to have a serious reorganisation if this industry is to be saved,” he said.
Maina said cartels have infiltrated the tea auction business with little cash from sales reaching the farmer. He said putting KTDA under the Auditor General will help end farmers’ exploitation.
“KTDA should not be regarded as a corporate private company, it should be subjected to all statutes. Today, it hides under the Cooperatives laws and that is how it is not subjected to the Auditor General’s scrutiny,” he said.
He said ensuring KTDA is answerable to the Auditor General will ensure it is more transparent and responsive.
Maina maintained that the voting structure at KTDA must be changed to ensure tea growers have a better voice in its management.
“It should be one man, one vote when it comes to voting for the leaders. The present structure where you vote as per shareholding is what has taken powers from the small tea growers and handed it to cartels,” he said.
The culture of tea brokers making way more money than the farmers should be brought to an end through immediate reforms in the sector.
A task force report on the tea industry that was commissioned by President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2016 to look into how to improve tea farmers’ earnings remains unimplemented.
The task force chaired by Kagiri Kamatu came with radical proposals that could have changed the way the highest export-earning industry operates.
Among its proposals was the restructuring of KTDA and review of its contracts with farmers; reduction of levies and the establishment of a regulator for the industry, years after a similar body was scrapped.
The report recommended a review of the governance of small-scale tea subsector, particularly in terms of employees of KTDA (MS) and directors of KTDA Holdings being board members of tea factories which are independent.
The report said directors and employees of management agents should cease being directors of factories they manage.
It also recommended that a consultant be hired to interrogate the management fee and agreements for other factories and compare them with those of the KTDA.
Edited by R.Wamochie
