Deputy president Rigathi Gachagua has opened a consultative summit with the tea sub sector farmers in Kericho county.
The meeting is aimed at formulating reforms and adopting proposals that will be presented to parliament and enacted in the tea act.
Speaking as he met local leaders and farmers, DP Gachagua vowed that the existing tea act would be enforced to the last letter beginning Monday next week.
“We have embarked on an elaborate strategy bringing the stakeholders together to find out the interventions required in terms of direct marketing of our tea and value addition,” he said.
“The meeting seeks to examine and fundamentally address the bottlenecks that make the small-scale farmers remain poor despite the product competing favourably in the global market,” Gachagua added.
Rigathi also told off cartels in tea agencies, charging that it will not be business as usual.
The second in command regretted that farmers are making minimal gains whereas the demand for tea keeps growing across global markets.
The tea conference is expected to run for three days until Saturday.
It comes at a time when former directors are fighting back to have some of the reforms introduced scrapped, mainly on direct tea sales, the one-man-one-vote model in the election of KTDA directors, arguing it is disadvantaging farmers.
A newsmaker, reporter and anchor at Pearl Radio, Ndalilah Sharon is witty and savvy.
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