- The fund should be transferred to the National Treasury or the Office of the President since it's a strategic food security function
Image: JACK OWUOR
A proposal to dissolve the Strategic Food Reserve Trust Fund and transfer its functions to the National Cereals and Produce Board is ill-advised and will hurt the country's food security, Lugari MP Ayub Savula has warned.
Savula said transferring the functions of the fund to its oversight board instead of addressing and resolving issues at NCPB won't fix the problem.
The fund has an agency agreement with the NCPB. It instructs the board through the Principal Secretary who administers the fund.
Speaking in Kakamega on Saturday, Savula said the fund is about food, not just the cereals handled by NCPB, and its dissolution will hurt the administration of other crops it handles. He said accountability and transparency would be an issue once the fund is dissolved.
The fund also deals with milk, dairy products, meat and livestock, fish and rice, all of which are handled by various departments within the Agriculture ministry.
"This means that all these other foods will remain unattended to if the role of the SFRTF will be transferred to NCPB whose legal mandate is in cereals only," Savula said.
Savula said that the fund should instead be strengthened and transformed into a body corporate with a CEO as its administrator.
The CEO should report to the board and not the PS.
"The fund should be transferred to the National Treasury or the Office of the President since it's a strategic food security function which is a matter of national security as it coordinates with several state departments that are beyond crop development and agriculture research to avoid the undue dominance of maize in the food conversation," the MP said.
The lawmaker claimed some senior government officials were behind the push to disband the fund so they could use money in its accounts to import maize.
He said that MPs will lobby to shoot down the proposal when it is taken to Parliament.
Savula said there is a conflict of functions of administration of the fund as the PS who is the fund administrator also sits on the SFR oversight board.
"This process is very inefficient and leads to delays in executing the board's resolutions. On many occasions, the ministry simply ignores letters from the strategic food reserve agency and this is what should be addressed."
Edited by P.O