All state-owned sugar millers should be privatised to revive the sector, Opposition chief Raila Odinga has said.
Speaking in Migori on Friday, Raila said the fact that private millers were working and making profits when the public companies were grounding meant the biggest problem lay in their management.
He said it was time for the state to make hard decisions to make far-reaching reforms in the sector.
“We have sugar millers which mill, cut sugarcane but can’t pay farmers, workers and suppliers but still need renovation and loan waivers which don’t translate into profit,” Raila said in West Kanyamkago in Uriri constituency.
Raila said government millers have been run as parastatal “where relatives and retired civil servants without any experience in the sugar sector are given jobs.”
He was reacting to calls by local leaders led by Governor Okoth Obado, Senator Ochillo Ayacko and Uriri MP Mark Nyamita for his intervention to revive collapsing Sony Sugar. The company has not been milling for more than five and owes farmers salary arrears running into hundreds of millions of shillings.
The leaders wanted money pumped into the miller to renovate its old machine and pay workers.
Sony Sugar became the last government miller to collapse after Mumias, Muhoroni, Miwani, Chemelil and Ramisi.
Raila cited private millers like West Kenya, Butali, Sukari and Trans Mara which he said were working. "It shows we need a private management in the sector despite the ownership structure.”
Raila said Nyanza and Western regions need a single sugar firm to have a modern machine which can compete internationally.
“A factory like Sony has 5,000 acres of nucleus sugarcane, while in nearby Sudan others have over a million acres for sugarcane,” he said.
He said Kenya was barely surviving given its sugar woes. He cited the country's protection under the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa against importation of cheap sugar from the region.
The country is also party to a continental free trade area agreement that allows free movement of goods between African States.
Speaking to the Star on Monday, former Sony Sugar MD Paul Odola and deputy secretary general of Kenya Sugar Plantation and Allied Workers Union John Ogutu cited mismanagement as the biggest challenge facing public millers.
"We cant have a management that wants to be given free money while it produces nothing,” Odola said.
Ogutu said government millers machines may not be bad, as there is enough sugar in the country but “management works as if they don’t want to work, it is time for reforms. Even if we pump more capital, the management will remain poor.”
edited by peter obuya
