Society pleads for help to pay Sh10 million debt

By WAINAINA NDUNG’U

Nyeri, Kenya: The Othaya Dairy Co-operative Society Limited wants help to raise Sh10 million for its revival.

In a desperate plea for rescue from eminent collapse, the dairy’s management committee wants Government officials to help them get the funds to clear crippling debts owed to financial institutions, suppliers and staff.

The Chairman Josephat Gitahi pleaded yesterday: “We don’t know who to contact after President Kibaki retired. Visits to the Treasury and Office of the President have not yielded any fruit.”

The present management committee was appointed on June 28, 2010 to try and revive the dairy. “We wrote letters to the former president explaining the challenges that the dairy was facing. Two months before he left office, he promised that the whole debt of Sh10.1 million would be cleared by the Treasury.”

The society with 12,000 farmers said yesterday that their headquarters building in Othaya town could be sold by the Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) over a Sh3.9 million debt dating back to the ‘90s.

Building auctioned

The bank has threatened to auction the building opened in 1969 by then assistant Agriculture Minister JM Kariuki for a society then known as Mathingira, Chinga and Mahiga Dairymen’s Co-operative Society Limited.

In a letter to the society, the KCB Senior Recovery Manager Ronald Jumbe Kitti warned that the building would be auctioned in 21 days.

An urgent meeting called by the chairman yesterday heard that the society also owed Taifa Sacco Sh348,720, Nyeri District Co-operative Union Sh170,000, Triton Fuel Sh164,022, staff Sh320,506 and producers Sh5.7 million all totaling to Sh10.7 million.

The odds facing the society have led to low milk delivery with only 80 litres yesterday from a high of 10,000 litres during its heyday.