Murugi seeks Sh1.5 billion to boost maize reserves

By STEVE MKAWALE

The Special Programmes Ministry requires Sh1.5 billion to buy extra maize for the Strategic Grain Reserve.

Minister Esther Murugi told the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture yesterday that the 2.3 million bags of maize in the reserve would be depleted within three to four months.

She also denied claims that the country had 19 million bags of maize in commercial stocks.

"No one can explain the whereabouts of the 19 million bags everyone has been talking about. We have tried to ask even in Cabinet and none can explain that," she told the committee. Murugi revealed that she needed more money to increase the strategic grain reserves from the current 2.3 million bags of maize to 8 million bags to feed 4.3 million Kenyans who currently depend on relief food.

She regretted that Government bureaucracy had frustrated her ministry’s efforts to secure funds from the Treasury and appealed to the committee to intervene.

Murugi had appeared before the committee to give an update on the measures her ministry had put in place to cushion people living in Lower Eastern against starvation.