By Justus Monda

Pyrethrum was introduced in Kenya in the 1920’s by colonial farmers, who through influence caused the enactment of the Pyrethrum Act by the colonial Government.

And at independence Chapter 340 of the Laws of Kenya was promulgated to provide for the reorganisation and regulation of the pyrethrum industry and the control of growing, processing and marketing of pyrethrum, for scientific and agronomic research and for connected purposes.

Historically, this has fondly been referred to as the golden era of pyrethrum. Pyrethrum was the most important crop after coffee and tea.

During this period, Kenya produced over 70 per cent of the world production and the board had a cash reserve of over Sh5 billion for paying farmers for deliveries.

In retrospect, the rain started beating us in the 1990’s when Parliament enacted the State Corporations Act Chapter 446.

This is the period that has witnessed a litany of cases of theft, mismanagement and corruption by the new clique of managers and directors appointed and seconded to the board by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Stakeholders in the industry have been questioning most of the appointments to no avail.

The new managers apparent apathy and a clear luck of experience, technical knowledge and enterprise were clearly discernible.

Impunity

Due to the apparent impunity in the management of their industry, farmers have angrily responded by up-rooting pyrethrum and replacing it with other crops.

In retaliation, the Ministry of Agriculture officers have reacted by retrenching workers without paying them their terminal benefits or severance pay and also closed regional offices and scaled down on their operations.

Over 500 workers have been sacked from the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya( PBK) in a span of three years with another 190 listed for termination in 2010.

The stake holders and the workers have repeatedly questioned the rationale of the terminations because there was no systematic process of analysing the personnel needs or specifications.

Chief Executive of the Ministry of Agriculture, Dr Romano Kiome under whose docket PBK rests should take the flak. He has been associated with the ministry for the last eight years when there has been a poor show.

During President Kibaki’s visit to Japan, increase of the consumption of pyrethrum by the world’s second largest economy was emphasized.

The board has to date not made any known efforts towards fulfilling the Japanese requirements for pyrethrum.

The abrupt uncoordinated changes at the helm of PBK does not auger well for the confidence of the industry because any flips or flops are deemed in bad light.

Pyrethrum is used for the manufacture of aerosol sprays, insecticides, powders and veterinary pharmaceuticals and is preferred by consumers because of its good safety profile.

Unfortunately, the pyrethrum board has not made any new advances in the development of pyrethrum by-products for the last ten years.

The PBK has also reneged on their core mandate of protecting the local industry and has deliberately allowed foreign companies to take over the local market with synthetic substitutes with questionable human and environmental safety profiles besides draining our vital foreign currency and causing job losses.

The board does not own any patent rights for pyrethrum in Kenya or in the main market segment in the USA. On the contrary, the patent registration of pyrethrum products is owned by a consortium of US based brokers.

registration

Neither is their main pyrethrum extract nor the by-products fully registered by the Pest Control Products Board in accordance with CAP 346 laws of Kenya.

The Government should reconsider injecting the promised Sh400 million before the industry is properly liberalised.

—The writer is National chairman of Pyrethrum Growers Association