Sugar shortage hits parts of Makueni County

WOTE, KENYA: Acute sugar shortage has been reported in parts of the country with many consumers in Makueni County going without the commodity.

It is understood that retailers in parts of the county are avoiding stocking the commodity since the crackdown on the contraband sugar started.

The crisis follows a warning by Makueni County Commissioner Maalim Mohammed, a week ago, putting a notice on traders in possession of illegal goods in their warehouses.

At Wote town, most of the wholesalers have run out of stock and few remaining outlets opting to sell in small quantities instead of bulk selling.

A spot check at Ngooni Supermarket and wholesalers’ (Wote CBD) by The Standard revealed that the commodity had become scarce with the supermarket restricting customers to pick only two packets of 1 Kg each.

“Currently there is no enough sugar and sometimes we are forced to limit the customers to pick only 2 kilograms instead of allowing one customer picks all the sugar in the shelves”, said Ms. Victoria Mutheu Mbathi, Ngooni supermarket Manager.

She further said that in their wholesale outlets they had resulted not to sell the commodity in bulk.

The manager attributed the shortages to the government’s tough clamping on imported “bad” sugar and what she termed as politics in the whole issue.

The only available sugar in the supermarket was the Ndhiwa sugar brand with price tags of Sh129 per kilo.

For a period now, the scarce commodity is selling between Sh150 and Sh190 per kilo from the normal retail of between Sh 90 to Sh100.