• Wekesa earlier said the food reserve must not be merged with the board, whose image he said is tainted with corruption.
• Titus Maiyo of NCPB said the board has automated many processes to reduce human interaction
Image: FILE
The National Cereals and Produce Board has said it is not opposed to a proposed merger with the Strategic Food Reserve headed by former minister Noah Wekesa.
Early this week, Wekesa said the grain reserve must not be merged with the board, whose image he said was tainted by corruption.
Several former NCPB directors have been charged with corruption-related offences after they allegedly looted about Sh5 billion in 2018 by illegally supplying maize from Uganda and presenting false verification forms.
The Strategic Food Reserve Oversight Board (SFR) was created in 2015 to help stabilise food supply and prices.
On Wednesday, the NCPB said it was not opposed to the merger, and denied that it had a dark past.
"The truth of the matter is that currently, the NCPB is not in court for any case," Titus Maiyo, the head of communications at NCPB, said.
"We have a new management in place, which has introduced a raft of measures to mitigate against corruption."
He said the board has automated many processes to reduce human interaction.
"It is not his [Wekesa's] purview to fight government policy. The government has the prerogative through collective responsibility to merge, restructure or even dissolve government organisations for efficiency," Maiyo added.
Last week, Agriculture CS Peter Munya purported to dissolve the SFR board, but Wekesa said the CS has no such powers because the chairman is appointed by the President while board members are appointed by the Treasury CS.
Munya argued that the merger would reduce bureaucracies and wastage of funds.
He said the SFR department will be in charge of market surveys and other research activities, among its current functions, for farmers' benefit.
“The SFR will ... inform decisions on some interventions such as on prices when necessary," Munya said.
SFR has also been controlling the purchase of cereals, especially maize, from farmers.
Wekesa’s board also sets prices when necessary to protect farmers from losses when prices drop, mainly due to importation.
Last year, Wekesa blocked the importation of maize, resulting in the current stable prices.
The SFR did not buy any maize from farmers through the NCPB last year as usual because, Wekesa said, the good prices on the open market did not warrant government intervention.
The NCPB has over the years been used to import and sell subsidised fertiliser to farmers. But interference by cartels led to massive corruption that denied farmers benefits from the subsidies.
Edited by A. Ndung'u