Tea farmers use bluetooth technology for efficiency

By Standard on Sunday team

Tea farmers are set to benefit from a revolutionary technology that improves efficiency and transfer of data at tea buying centres.

The electronic weighing machines, which are so far on trial in three factories, has been well received by farmers who have for long complained that figures at buying centres were being tampered with by collection clerks.

In many factories, only full kilos and half kilos were being entered at buying centres, and any other grammes above this were not recorded.

The weight was being recorded by hand, which would then be transferred manually to records at the factories.

But now, following the acquisition of the machines, all this is being done at the tea-buying centre.

The set comprises of three gadgets: A weighing machine, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and a small printer.

All these are wireless and use bluetooth technology and are paired to each other.

Once the measurement is taken, the PDA receives the weight wirelessly from the weighing machine. The farmer gives his or her number, which is entred into the PDA. The clerk further entres the name of the buying centre, the mode of transporting the leaves to the factory and if by truck, the name of the driver.

This information is relayed to the printer wirelessly, which prints a receipt for the farmer.

Once the process is through, all this data is sent through a GSM network provided by Safaricom to the factory. It is received there by a server and automatically entered into the records.

"I’m happy now because in the past, so much of my work was going to waste," beamed Mr Nderitu Thuita, a farmer affiliated to Gathuthi Tea Factory in Nyeri. "In the past, we were wondering who benefits from all those kilos that were never recorded."

The system is in use in Mununga Tea Factory in Kirinyaga and Nyankoba Tea Factory in Kisii.

Bogus growers

Kisii farmers contacted by The Standard on Sunday say collection clerks ‘steal’ from them and later sell the leaf quantity unaccounted for to bogus growers, who are registered with KTDA, but have no tea farms.

And if they doubt the clerk’s word about the weight, the official threatens not to buy their leaf again and that is why they have kept delivering. They say the clerks are so arrogant that some growers, out of frustration, have either abandoned farming or resorted to hawking their crop to brokers.

Zone Six Regional Manager Willis Odhiambo expresses confidence that the introduction of new system will end falsification of green leaf weight.

"The claims of farmers being shortchanged should not arise any more. It is not the clerk to read," Odhiambo explains, in an interview at his office in Kisii.

Odhiambo, who is in charge of 12 factories in the zone, says the new technology has been piloted at Nyankoba Tea Factory for a year and found operational.

Mr Mokaya Ogero, a farmer contracted to Nyankoba Tea Factory and a committee member of Rikenye Tea Buying Centre, says the initiative is a success story. They now take a shorter time to buy and deliver the crop.

However, the introduction of the system has received mixed reception in Murang’a District.

Farmers affiliated to Kiru Tea Factory have welcomed the move while others protest, saying KTDA did not explain how the machine works.

Stories by Patrick Muthangani, Robert Nyasato and Boniface Gikandi