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President Uhuru Kenyatta, as a farmer, I feel obliged to write to you regarding allegations that you betrayed us, by signing an agreement with Uganda, to flood our market with their sugar.
Whereas this may sound sweet to the likes of Majority Leader Aden Duale, a pastoralist who doesn’t understand the science of farming, please take note that sugar cane farmers like me have been hit below the belt. The political heat generated by your visit will eventually taste sour for your administration.
Initially, we thought you and your administration meant well, when you bailed out Sony Sugar and Mumias. Farmers had started warming up to you politically, for they thought you were for them. How do we explain your gesture of attempting to bail them out while allowing sugar from elsewhere to flood our market, in the name of filling a deficit? Which deficit? A deficit only exist in the eyes of hawks, who want to make a quick killing by dumping sugar in our market while suffocating a poor farmer like me.
Mr President, you have stabbed sugar cane farmers in the back. Since when did we last queue in the supermarket looking for sugar? Visit any store in town and you will see our local sugar stacked in the shelf, waiting for buyers.
Where I come from, you are likely to see canes rotting in the farm because millers cannot take more from the farmers. Why? They say the market is flooded with cheap sugar.
It is therefore, the responsibility of your Government to ensure that as you to attempt to appease the taste of consumers, you also protect farmers, who are also your subjects. It must not all be about pleasing Uganda at the expense of your people.
Uganda can export electricity to Kenya at lower rates so that our sugar factories can crush optimally and cheaper. This will lower the cost of sugar from our millers, a benefit which will directly be passed to consumers.
I hear people say competition is healthy and bringing cheap sugar here is healthy. Why is our sugar expensive? The cost of doing business in Kenya is not cheap. From fertilisers to fuel and tax, farmers and business people are the most exploited lot by their own government.
Our roads are in deplorable state, greatly affecting transportation of farm produce. And because of the high cost of machinery maintenance, this cost is indirectly shared by consumers.
These are symptoms of an ailing economy which needs to be fixed by your Government, rather than addressing the gaps through damping of goods from other markets.
The decision by MPs and leaders from Western Kenya to snub Uhuru for talks on sugar importation from Uganda was wrong and ill-advised.
The move threatens to jeopardise Kenya’s relationships with Uganda which is key trading partner.
The Opposition, at this juncture, should be seen fighting for better packages for crop farmers, affordable sugar to all buyers and improved infrastructure in the sugar belts.
Under the free markets, all the 47 counties should be accorded green light to sell or buy sugar from anywhere in the world provided it is affordable and of the highest quality.
Meanwhile, l concur with the tenet that let’s buy from Kenya and build Kenya. However, we should have more to make choices from.
Findings show that sugar sub-sector is run at a loss. Neither farmers nor the Government is benefiting, forcing the prices for local produce to shoot up.
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