Farmers in Kiambu county are set to benefit once the ongoing construction of Mau Mau road is complete.
Dairy farmers from Lari Kirenga, Kamburu and Nyanduma will access the market easily.
Speaking on Monday, the farmers said their main challenge is poor road network, since there area has no tarmac road making it difficult to take their produce to the market.
“When it rains, very few vehicles come to collect milk especially in Kamburu and Nyanduma. The roads are bad and during the dry seasons, the roads, which are full of potholes, are rough,” said Stephen Mungai, a dairy farmer.
Mungai hopes once the road is complete, access to the market as well as Nairobi will be easy.
Lari MP Jonah Mburu lauded President Uhuru Kenyatta for initiating works on the 540km Mau Mau which cuts across the constituency and another 85km of feeder roads in the area at a cost of Sh30 billion.
The road will traverse four counties of Kiambu, Murang'a, Nyeri and Nyandarua.
“Apart from the main road that will pass through our constituency, we shall have about 85kms of additional roads joining the Mau Mau main road. They will connect the road to two major highways, which are the Nairobi-Nakuru highway and also the Nairobi-Maai Mahiu road,” he said.
Tea farmers from Kamburu and Nyanduma are appealing to the government to speed up the road works saying with the rainy season here, lorries transporting tea leaves risk getting stuck in the dilapidated roads.
The farmers are, however, optimistic that once the road is done, tea hawking will be a thing of the past. Many farmers started selling to private buyers after some factory lorries were unable to collect the harvested leaves from their farms.
“A lot of farmers resulted to tea hawking since it was quick money. They are bought on collection. Lorries from the factories were unable to access farms due to bad roads,” said Salome Wanja, a tea farmer from Gachoire in Nyanduma.
Area MP said the road will open up the area and attract more investors thus boosting job opportunities for many people.
“Uhuru has really tried even if he has faced a lot challenges such as Tangatanga checks, invasion of desert locust, residents being infected with Covid-19 disease and these issues have affected the government a lot,” said Mburu.
-Edited by Sarah Kanyara
