Barasa brazenly and blatantly gave misleading facts about MSC that must be corrected. Whether he is playing sugar politics for monetary gain since it has become precious gold to line predators’ pockets that is his problem. However, he should not spread lies to knowledgeable people.
He claimed that Mumias Sugar and Sarrai Group, which was given the lease to operate the giant miller were the reason as to why Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) ordered closure of all sugar factories in the region due to cane shortage, what are the facts proving this when Mumias sugar is simply trying to struggle back to life after staying dead for more than 10 years?
The governor also claimed live on air that the company is responsible for sugarcane shortage in the western Kenya region when in actual sense it is that very shortage that ground its operations to a complete halt more than 10 years ago.
It is prudent for Barasa to explain to the people of Western where he was when West Kenya Sugar and by extension Kabras millers plotted, engineered and ruthlessly executed the sugarcane poaching crisis in region whose key targeted cane farmers were those contracted to Mumias Sugar bringing its production to zero.
Can the governor tell Kenyans how many contracted sugarcane farmers West Kenya had when it executed the poaching crisis and how many it has contracted and engaged in sugarcane development programmes in the western Kenya region?
And is he aware that West Kenya Sugar, which initiated cane poaching still, engages in the dirty business that has led to cane scarcity that is being witnessed in the region to date?
Last week a team of police officers from Enoosaen police station in Transmara West subcounty led by police commander Jamleck Ngaruiya and CIPU officers who were on patrol intercepted 20 tractors belonging to West Kenya Sugar which were fully loaded with sugarcane contracted to Transmara Sugar Company.
According to the police, the drivers disappeared and abandoned the tractors upon being commanded to stop for interrogation. The police later towed the tractor to Transmara Sugar parking yard for safe custody due to lack of space within the Police station.
On this note the governor should come out and call the devil by its name instead of pointing baseless accusations on MSC to avoid exposing his ignorance in public.
He further claimed that failure for the Sarrai Group to exploit the 15, 000 acres of MSC nucleus land by planting sugarcane was the major reason that led to the cane shortage, adding that Sarrai had only planted 500 acres.
In the same story, Barasa accused Sarrai for not making good use of ethanol and co-generation plants, which he said were key as far as the running of MSC was concerned. These kind of audacious utterances which are without fact by Barasa completely exposes him as a leader who is either peddling lies for his personal benefit.
This is a grave matter of public concern for a person of the governor stature to go to a national television or even allow himself to be quoted by a national newspaper knowing very well that he is not sufficiently familiar with matters dealing with Mumias Sugar Company.
According to the records at AFA, the acreage under cane on the MSC nucleus land is 2,207.59 and not 500 and the total land is 8,200 acres, not 15, 000 as claimed by Barasa.
Another damning fact that the governor apparently conveniently chose to ignore is the fact that ethanol and cogen plants have nothing to do with Sarrai Group since despite sitting on the same plot with Mumias Sugar milling factory, the two plants are different entities which are under different management all together after they were hived out of Mumias Sugar and sold off.
Indeed, there are widespread reports that Victoria Bank, which sold the two assets to Vartox Resources Inc of Dubai after mysteriously acquiring them from Eco Bank and the French Development Agencies Proparco, which had held them as surety for loans that MSC had acquired.
That it is also common knowledge that MSC which had gone under for close to 10 years ago due to mismanagement and cane poaching started its operations in October 2022 but faced extremely serious deliberate stoppages whose intentions were geared towards killing the giant miller forever.
Therefore, with hardly a year in operation it's not just possible for MSC to have caused cane shortage as claimed by Barasa, noting that we have four other sugar factories in Western region namely Busia, Olepito, Nzoia Sugar and West Kenya Sugar.
Kenyans must also not forget that Sarrai Group has been in and out of court for as many times as the country can recall, hence affecting its development programmes as far as planting of sugarcane is concerned.
However, we must give the Sarrai Group credit where it is due for withstanding challenges and unnecessary interruptions and going ahead to plant 2,207.59 acres of sugarcane of which the the governor deliberately failed to mention.
It's also important to note that with the eight months of production with numerous disruptive stoppages, Mumias Sugar (2021) Ltd has paid farmers slightly above Sh1.7 billion and an extra Sh1.9 billion in machinery, tractors, loggers and loaders, among others
That is besides workers’ salaries, county cess that was being paid promptly to the counties of Kakamega, Busia and Bungoma and not forgetting the amount in value paid for VAT.
Journalist and media consultant
