Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has convened a two-day national conference to discuss the planned reforms in the tea sector.
The meeting to be held in Kericho beginning Thursday will bring together farmers, stakeholders in the sub-sector and elected leaders from various parts of the country.
Under Executive Order No. 1 of 2023, President William Ruto tasked the DP with spearheading public sector reforms in the Coffee and tea subsectors.
Gachagua has already held meetings on coffee in parts of Central Kenya which also brought together elected leaders from coffee-growing areas.
The purpose of the meetings, he said, is to agree on what needs to be done with the MPs and Senators expected to “take it from there and come up with regulations and legislations to cushion farmers from middlemen”.
The Kericho conference, according to the DP, is meant to discuss matters facing the sector, especially on production, marketing, sales and governance to ensure increased productivity and better returns for the farmers will also follow.
“We have embarked on an elaborate strategy bringing the stakeholders together to find out the interventions required in terms of direct marketing of our tea and value addition,” he said during a past meeting.
He said they are reining in on the cartels that have been taking advantage of the tea farmers and coming in between the growers and consumers globally.
The meeting, he added, is to enrich ongoing discussions on reforms in the sub-sector at Parliament, and other avenues, including his office.
“The meeting seeks to examine and fundamentally address the bottlenecks that make the small-scale farmers remain poor despite the product competing favourably in the global market,” Gachagua said on Tuesday.
A review of the Tea Act 2020 and the establishment of a new auction are among the issues that are set to be floated during the meeting.
It comes at a time when former directors are fighting back to have some of the reforms introduced scrapped, mainly on direct tea sales, the one-man-one-vote model in the election of KTDA directors, arguing it is disadvantaging farmers.
