Pundit
I will post a response by a very young brilliant Nandi lawyer on this reforms. Munya actually went with very soft reforms on Tea sector. What is happening is that farmers are getting mislead. I am not sure what John Kamau and Daily nation want to achieve by spreading halfbaked accussations against KTDA. My dad was one of the fist directors of our local tea factory after reforms in 200s.. I think it was Tea act of 1999 or so. Activists led and funded by Njehu Gatabaki formed a union and they wanted KTDA to be dismantled and our factory to move away from KTDA. There were a lot of falsehoods. One of the famous was the Retained earning (funds set aside for future factory expansion, emergency boiler repairs etc was money that needed to be distributed to farmers. My dad having being a banker canvassed the issue and realized it was misinformation. He convinced the farmers that this was a non issue. However on the AGM the union ambushed the directors at the meeting and had a group planning to walk off until they got the money.. So they asked my dad was the chairman to sign off on the escrow account to be distributed. He told them over his dead body. after the meeting all those farmers who were on the sideline actually started asking themselve why would a man who had to ever been inlvovled in corruption want to put his life on the line unless he was convinced that it was the wrong to spend the money. The next AGM all farmers revolted against the union and that was the end of that mess. when election time came Njehu lost. My point is that most of the accussations against KTDA are falsehoods and lack of understanding of KTDA role in the Tea market.. the private auctions are necessary all the private factories have contracts with KTDA to buy tea leaves from them at certain prices .. this relationship predates the reforms of 2000, the 2.5 % fee is not that high,, usually management fees start at 3.5%
Anyway we need to educate farmers about the overproduction of tea all over the world and the need to control supply and explore other markets in Africa .. I think we can get markets in West Africa, the burgers there drink cocoa instead of tea and coffee