KENYA – Kenya Tea Development Agency Holdings (KTDA) has started to disburse Kes 1 billion (US$7.39m) to 600,000 farmers affiliated with the agency, which was deducted mistakenly for the subsidized fertilizer program.
The agency has attributed the mistake to system hitches that deducted Kes 500 from thousands of its tea farmers instead of Kes 5.
The deduction aroused serious disquiet among tea farmers affiliated with KTDA, who protested for such a big difference. KTDA used to deduct only Kes 1.50 per kg of green leaf supplied per year before increasing to Kes 5.
“In March, I think there was a hitch in our system, and instead of deducting Kes 5, they deducted the whole amount. “We are apologizing to the farmers, and we have already begun the process of returning the funds,” KTDA chairman David Ichoho stated.
“We had earlier deducted Kes 3,000 from the farmers for every bag of fertilizer, but there was a deficit of Ksh500 for every bag.”
Icholo added that the KTDA had not yet determined if the error was made by their technology or a by a staff.
The KTDA chairman announced the development during a consultative forum between KTDA and tea directors from 37 factories east of the Rift Valley.
Ichoho said the consultative meeting was a follow-up forum to come up with a harmonized draft for the Management System as proposed by the tea act.
“One of the requirements of the Act is to have a management agreement between KTDA and the 37 factories. We are agreeing on various scopes of the work that the management and role of the boards should meet, and staff hired within our institutions,” he explained.
Ichoho noted that the proposals were diverse, bearing in mind that factories were coming from different levels of liquidity in terms of development, infrastructure, and size.
“Ideally, the needs vary from one factory to the other, but we are keen to develop a harmonized draft that will take care of all the major issues. Farmers cannot agree that manufacturing of tea and management, and we must ensure we get experts of international level taking note that our tea is exported across the globe,” he elaborated.
According to him, the agency would be seeking advice from the Attorney General of the country to amend some clauses in the Act, adding that farmers lost 100 million kgs of tea in the first quarter of this year due to climate change and drought.
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