Irate farmers block coffee task force

Members of the Coffee Task Force were yesterday barred from entering a venue for a scheduled stakeholders meeting in Kutus town by offee farmers in Kirinyaga County.

The agitated farmers claimed the task force had failed to include their recommendations in the final draft they had presented to it earlier.

Led by Francis Gachoki from Baragwe Farmers’ Cooperative Society, a group of growers blocked the entrance of the Anglican Church hall, which was the venue of the meeting to ensure no member got in.

Mr Gachoki said the Professor Joseph Kieyah-led task force was forcing ‘some foreign’ recommendations on the farmers hence the resistance and hostility that prevailed at the abortive meeting.

“We cannot be forced by this task force to take what we feel is harmful to us more so when the coffee is ours and we know what would be best for us,” he said.

The meeting had been attended by area coffee farmers who criticised their cooperative society colleagues for disrupting it.

“Why don’t you let Kieyah and his team settle in the hall so that he can tell us his agenda, instead of blocking him from the venue?” posed Mafric Njagi, a farmer.