Tea farmers deserve better treatment

For the past few weeks, the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) has been in the news for the wrong reasons.

KTDA has become a cash cow for a selected few while small scale tea farmers, whom it is supposed to serve, can hardly make ends meet due to poor and delayed payments.

But as the government seeks a solution for tea farmers’ woes, it needs not to go far but simply retrieve a taskforce report that is the cure to this problem.

The report was made by a team appointed by President Uhuru Kenyatta to look into how to improve tea farmers’ earnings. The task force chaired by Kagiri Kamatu made radical proposals that could change the way the highest export-earning industry operates if implemented.

Among its proposals was the restructuring of KTDA and review of its contracts with farmers; reduction of levies and the establishment of a regulator for the industry, years after a similar body was scrapped. 

The team recommended a review of the governance of the small-scale tea subsector, particularly in terms of employees of KTDA and directors of KTDA Holdings being board members of independent tea factories.

It recommended a study of its model with a view to addressing farmers’ grievances. The thorny issues raised included a lack of competitive bidding in the appointment of managing agents for over 60 tea factories owned by about 600,000 small-scale farmers across the country.

KTDA charges 2.5 per cent as a management fee, which the stakeholders argued is too high and wanted it reduced to one per cent. The report made it clear that factories, as independent companies, were at liberty to seek any new management agents. It further recommended that a consultant be hired to interrogate the management fee and agreements for other factories and compare them with those of the KTDA.

Though registered as independent legal entities, tea factories are run by KTDA staff and use its company secretary, which is seen to be against the law and causes a conflict of interest.

The task force recommended the putting in place of a productivity improvement programme.

Last year, Gem MP Elisha Odhiambo tabled a bill in Parliament aimed at reforming the tea sector and giving farmers more say in decision making, among other radical reforms. The Bill, which died soon after it was tabled, proposed that  KTDA be reverted to its old status as industry regulator.

The change of KTDA to an agency, the MP stated, weakened supervision of the agency’s management by farmers who own the tea factories, leading to major governance compromises that have led to exploitation of farmers through the payment of levies and fees and loss of funds through inflated project costs.

The bill also cited numerous cases of mismanagement, loss of money in collapsed banks, conflicts of interest, contempt of court cases as well as fraud and misappropriation of farmers’ money.

It came in the backdrop of a Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report which showed 50 per cent of smallholder tea farmers in the country live below the poverty line despite privatisation promising better life and earnings for them.

Ironically, as the farmers wallowed in poverty, KTDA was putting up a multi-billion shilling high-rise building in Nairobi’s Koinange Street. Indeed, as the President rolls out his Big Four Agenda, the Food Security pillar, which cannot be achieved without transforming the agricultural sector which contributes 51 per cent of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is being neglected.

Over 70 per cent of Kenya’s rural population depends on agriculture for livelihood while it employs over 40 per cent of the total population.

This sector is the principal driver in the manufacturing sector and all the other pillars depend on it for their success.

- The writer is the Farmers Party leader