Blow to tea reforms as crusaders abandon ship

Some crusaders of reforms who have been critical of the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) have now abandoned the cause. 

Among them is former Makomboki director Kamau Kaguma who said he no longer wants to be associated with those fighting KTDA lest it undermines his quest for a position in the controversy-ridden agency.

“Kindly stop including me in the list of personalities opposed to KTDA since it has cleared me to vie as a director in Makomboki Tea Factory. It will be bad for me should I be seen to be opposed to them,” Mr Kaguma told the Nation Tuesday.

“I have agreed with other reform crusaders that I cross over. I will be their eyes and ears if I win the elections. We will pick up the reform battle from the inside.”

However, advocates of the “Munya tea reforms”, named after their sponsor Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya, announced a three-pronged action plan to fight KTDA’s push to hold directors’ elections.

According to Mt Kenya Tea Reform Group chairman Mugwe Njunu, the lobby will appeal against the October 8 ruling that allowed KTDA to hold elections.

The group is also to launch factory level campaigns against those defecting to contest the elections.

Mr Njunu said his group will also push the National Assembly to enact the Tea Bill within three weeks “so that KTDA can suffer a reboot and be compelled to hold the elections in conformity with the one-man one-vote principle”. 

Mr Njunu added that KTDA has transformed legal vacuums into a tool to entrench itself “to a point its top brass holds even the government in raw contempt”.

“The third action plan will be the elections, which if they have to be held, will have to adhere to the letter and the guidelines in the articles of association, which demand that they be held in annual general meetings at factories and not in bushes,” he said.

Way forward

Mr Njunu said factories have been mobilised to convene extraordinary Tea Buying Centres Joint Committee forums to chart the way forward.

 “It is in those meetings that start today that we will expect current directors to explain why they are opposed to reforms, how the second payment (bonus) rates were calculated, whether we will have a caretaker committee to preside over the elections if they must be held outside the Munya reforms and when chairman Peter Kanyago resign after it has emerged that he is a broker,” Mr Njunu said.

 Kenya Union of Small Scale Tea Owners Secretary-General Kagondu Karanu said the Tea Bill that is at the National Assembly Committee on Delegated Legislation should be fast-tracked.

“Mr Munya who has assured us that the KTDA charade is crumbling. It is just a matter of time before the government executes lawful force to detach it from farmers’ tits it is sucking,” Mr Karanu said.

Gatanga MP Nduati Ngugi Tuesday said MPs from tea and coffee growing regions are keenly following the proceedings in the committee to ensure “the President’s agenda of increasing farmers’ earnings by not less than 50 per cent is realised in the shortest time possible”.

Gichugu MP and a member of the committee Gichimu Githinji said: “KTDA will soon be handed the legal proof that there are limits to resistance.”