Illegal sugar Importation Causing Losses to Local Firms

RE: ILLEGAL SUGAR IMPORTATION MAIN CAUSE OF LOSSES RECORDED BY LOCAL FIRMS

The continued importation of illegal Sugar into the Country is to blame for the huge losses recorded by Mumias Sugar Company and unless the Kenya Government comes out forcefully to stop this illegal sugar imports from flooding our local market, the collapse of the Sugar Industry is now imminent and will result into further massive job losses in the sector.

Already the Country’s retail shops including Supermarkets are fully stocked with imported sugar and one would hardly find any stock of local sugar and this is designed by well-connected sugar barrons operating within government to ensure no local sugar finds itself on retail shop shelves hence trigger huge importation of the product into the local sugar market killing our local Industries as well as rendering thousands of Kenyans including farmers jobless as millers remain helpless and unable to process sugar since the market is flooded with readily cheap sugar.

Extensive labour in the Agricultural sector remains the only guarantee for the Kenya Government to create employment for thousands of youths and when the same government fails to promote and protect the same from cartels then Kenyans will be convinced that the government is an a complice because this illegal Sugar is being sold in our Supermarkets in full glare of the government when it has all the machinery to stop it from entering the Country.

Sadly, nobody from government is talking.   Equally members of Parliament from the Sugar-cane growing areas’ continued silence is baffling including those in the Jubilee coalition busy shouting themselves out clapping to all manner development yet they cannot raise a finger and demand government protects Mumias Sugar whose collapse will severely impoverish the residents of Western region.  Where are these MPs from Western Kenya basking in the Jubilee administration as well as those in the opposition to speak about these ills against the Industry that is a life line for the region?

The Central Organisaiton of Trade Unions, COTU (K) challenges these MPs to petition the Jubilee government to save Mumias Sugar and other Sugar firms from further losses by reigning in these cartels who are operating within the Jubilee government and stopping them from further importation of illegal sugar into the Country.

Benson Okwaro

DEPUTY SECRETARY GENERAL