Kiambu flower growers wins international fair trade inGermany

A flower growing company based in Kiambu County has won this year’s international fair trade awards held in Berlin Germany for prudent use of premiums on its workers.

Fairtrade producers, workers, campaigners, and traders were honoured in the International Fairtrade Awards 2020.

The Valentine Growers was the only flower farm awarded in the category of hired labour organisation due to the changing lives of their workers and community.

Speaking on Wednesday at the flower farm in Kiambaa Kibubuti, the firm fair trade officer and ICT Denis Gakuru said payment of wages, treatment of employees were among the parameters considered.

“We most value education where the fair trade premium goes to paying school fees to employee’s children from secondary school, tertiary learning up to the university," Gakuru said.

He added that "and also for employees who want to further their education. We have also conformed to the collective bargaining agreement where our employees get their wages on time."

More than 80 applications from 30 countries were received across the four categories - Small Producer Organization (SPO) of the Year; Hired Labour Organization (HLO) of the Year; Trader of the Year and Campaign of the Year.

Joram Kanyua. the marketing manager said the company had been badly hit by the pandemic but were able to recover in the month of April.

“We recalled our employees after the shutdown due to Covid-19 was lifted and we started the business again,” Kanyua said.

Kanyua noted that the second wave of the virus across the world might affect their sale of flowers in Europe, which is their biggest customer.

“Normally we export over 25 million flower stems but it dropped due to the Covid-19 with  2 million stems which is equivalent to Sh25 million that we lost and we are not talking of profits now we are talking of surviving this year,” said Kanyua,

Valentine growers deal mainly with rose flowers which they sell directly to supermarkets across Europe.

Jacinta Wanjira, a flower grader said that the fair trade premium has helped the employees cater to their children's education.

“We only stayed home for two months after covid-19 set into the country and we were recalled as employees and we can only thank Valentine growers since we are still working and getting all our benefits as employees,” said Wanjira.