Your excellency as you are well aware the country’s sugar industry is currently tittering on the verge of collapse just like it happened to the cotton industry in the 1970s with disastrous consequences the country has never recovered from.
The most critical issue is that sugarcane production is currently at its lowest level because thousands of sugarcane farmers across the western Kenya region abandoned farming the crop just like they did with cotton because of the high costs involved in the production worsened by poor payments.
The entry of brokers buying the crop from farmers cheaply and selling to millers at high profit has made everything worse at the ground level.
This state of affairs is what has led the millers to stop sugar production because there are no sufficient sugarcane supplies, it is only worse that there are no tangible plans by most of the millers to invest in sugarcane production – if they can’t where will they get the raw material? What does that mean to the industry?
However, the worst and deadly predator to the industry are the cheap sugar importing cartels operatives. Even worse that some of these operatives are factory owners, who wreaking havoc to sugarcane production and sugar sales in the country.
The current high retail price of sugar currently at more than Sh240 per kilo is bound to increase even higher. This is yet another clear sign that all is not well and something must be done immediately to reverse these deadly trends.
The most critical issue that must not be forgotten is the death of the sugar development programmes in the country. This is after legislators quashed the Sugar Development Levy, which inevitably spelt a death sentence to sugarcane farmers.
Mr President, thousands of sugarcane farmers in this country cannot afford to grow the crop simply because it is very expensive, right from land preparation, planting, crop husbandry, harvesting and transport to the millers, all of which fall on the farmers’ shoulders. Unfortunately, the returns even at the current price of Sh5,200 is a drop in the ocean.
This has quickly morphed into a sugarcane poaching crisis that has never been witnessed in this country, which seen the collapse of Mumias Sugar Company, the only ultra-modern factory in the country.
In 2011 West Kenya Sugar initiated the cane poaching in all areas which were basically under Mumias Sugar. These incidents happened in Busia county and another one in Shikunga-Kakamega county, where the firm set up an illegal weighbridge in the area whose main purpose was to poach sugarcane from Mumias-contracted farmers, and ferry the same to West Kenya/Kabras in Kakamega county about 70km away.
That while in office we urge you to use your powers and influence to ensure that we have policies and rules that will salvage this industry from possible total collapse. The collapse of the sugar sector would extremely have devastating consequences to both the farmers and the consumers.
We, therefore, urge you stop those who have blatantly continued to mess the sector by getting involved in sugarcane poaching and illegal cheap sugar importation.
It is an open secret that billionaire Jaswant Rai is dominating the sugar sector.
That for us sugarcane farmers the man must be forced to concentrate on his four factories namely West Kenya, Olepito Sugar, Sukari Sugar and Naitiri Sugar and stop interfering with the others.
Mr President, it is also paramount to us that you lead from the front and use your office to revive Mumias Sugar under Sarrai Group whose operations are currently being deliberately sabotaged.
You must, therefore, whip the country’s legislators to come together and ensure that the zoning clause contained in the Sugar Bill, 2022 by Nabakholo MP Emmanuel Wangwe is not expunged as suggested by some.
On this note Mr President, I also want to request that sugar prices be regulated by a government agency so that no miller is allowed to increase prices as they wish because by allowing sugar millers to control prices will create a monopoly where only few will benefit.
It's also our humble plea that your office will ensure that all the sugar outgrower companies and the former Kenya Sugar Board are revived to run the sector the way they used to do. These agencies will work with the farmers and government and they will, from time to time, advise on different matters, such as price increment for the farmers.
That it is also extremely critical that the sugarcane development programme is brought back into action and the farmers supplied with subsidised fertilisers and other necessary farm inputs to produce sugar.
Therefore, Mr President, its indeed our passionate plea that you exercise your executive powers to destroy the sugar cartels in order to salvage the industry from total collapse ones and for all.
