Dead farmers included in requisition list, court told

 By Wainaina Ndungu

A group of Murang’a tea farmers who requisitioned for their factory’s special general meeting included names of deceased farmers, a Nyeri court heard on Thursday.

Justice James Wakiaga heard that the Makomboki Tea Factory farmers had included at least three names of their deceased colleagues whose grower numbers had already been deactivated.

Former Makomboki factory manager Wilson Gachua said they discovered the anomaly when he asked James Muiru, the field services clerk, to verify the list. “There were many other deceased farmers who were purported to have signed the requisitioning notice for the SGM but we do not have documents to ascertain their deaths,” Muiru told the court.

He said they also discovered several other anomalies in the list, such as inclusion of non-existing farmers whose details  did not tally with the factory data. Gachua denied that the group of farmers led by Moffat Hudson and Kamau Mbue had served him with a notice to hold the SGM saying the receipt had been acknowledged by the factory accountant who was not his immediate junior.

Voted out

He said he only learnt of the notice days after the meeting was held by the convenors who claimed to have voted out the incumbent directors and replaced them with others. The manager said some members who had called the meeting had ‘many’ cases against their factory.

But the judge pointed out it was not a bad thing to have a number of cases against a company in which one had interests. Gachua also told the court that an earlier attempt to hold an SGM by the disgruntled farmers had led to the disruption of factory operations for hours until he called the Kenya Tea Development Agency Ltd Nairobi head office to deliver a copy of a court injunction barring the meeting.

The factory is seeking an injunction restraining Joseph Mbote, Hudson Moffat, Kamau Mbue, Joseph Gitonga, Joseph Marite, Benson Mwangi and Francis Karanja from interfering with its business.