VIHIGA COUNTY- THE ECONOMY, IN FOCUS: MUDETE TEA FACTORY, A WATER DOWN OR ???

         Mudete Tea Factory is located in Vihiga county of Western Kenya. The factory Is to serve the Tea rich Western Kenya especially Vihiga county which receives an annual rainfall of about 1500mm to 2000mm. The factory established in the mid 1990s has seen a fair share of progress but has remained a dimunitive figure in the progress of the county. One could argue that maybe it is due to the fact that the tea farmers within the region are much less reluctant in upping their game to produce higher and quality tea for the factory. The factory which is supposed to run on a 24hour basis goes on occasions where it runs out of tea to process!Clearly someone is sleeping on the job. the wellbieng of this factory fundamentally lies in two people; the farmer and the farmer.therefore this factory can only be a success story if the farmer realised how much he can reap from the factory. But one problem comes into mind when you talk about the farmer not delivering: the issue of remuneration.
        Let me talk about remuneration , that is, the pay farmers get from selling their tea. Currently, a farmer takes home Kshs. 14 per kilogram of green tea leaves he takes to the factory. The bonus is a lumpsum of kshs. 30 per kg. That is reason enough for a farmer to get to work, on the basis of more tea more money.
         Skeptics may look at the above statistics and make hasty decisions that Mudete tea factory owes its abysmal performance on the farmer in largesse yet forget to look at that vital role the company has to play in the midst of creating a progressive income to all and sundry.
        Earlier in the year the company introduced the electronic kit for taking and collecting data on the farmer perfomance in terms of delivering tea at the collection centre. A noble and brillant idea. This electronic device was to reduce cases of tea being stolen by malicious clerks due to faulty manual weighing machines. It was quite a welcome relief.
    What the cop[many failed to fulfill was, by and large sufficient amount of the electronic weighing machines. that meant that several collection centres had to share one machine. the trouble was further escalated by the inefficiency of the clerks to operate the rather complex machines.
     The factory's inability to purchase enough or increase the number of the electronic weighing machines has seen farmers stay at the collection centres until later into the night. the trouble has further escalated when In what was seen as a noble Idea the company decided to purchase more lorries for the transit of the tea from the collection centres. This saw the company waylay the clerks and replace them with the drivers who were to double as clerks!
     In so doing the company has of course just heaped a burden on the rather burdened farmer. Western region is Known for its poor security and rahter out of the way murders that can come from a simple case of one refusing to part with the hard earned phone.
     By retaining women, who of course take a better share of plucking and ferrying tea to the collection centres, of course raises a question of just how sane the factory management is in taking into account the welfare of farmers? A farmer has to wait up until midnight to sell his/her tea.
    The factory has clearly shown how recluse and redundant the factory management is. It has also exposed the innate rudeness and lack of care on the common mwannainchi who of course is the bulwark of the factories survival. While the management wallow in riches as they carry home Upto Kshs. 800, 000 a months the poor farmer is slowly disintegrating into abyss of dispair and fear of the evils of the night.
     The condition of the factory and distant touch to the farmer has seen so many farmers result to selling their tea to hungry middlemen who have found a catch where despair and poverty reigns. This middlemen buy tea at between Kshs. 20-25 and pay you at the delivery point. The locals call such points as M-pesa, a name used by Kenyan telecommunication giant Safaricom on its money transfer service.
      If Mudete does not wake up and look into the issues of the farmers now and not later, there is every reason to believe that the county of Vihiga should brace for the death of its first fuel for the economy.
       My plea is, The factory should look into the welfare of the women who may be having children to tend to and establish a time schedule to collect the tea. Some of this women are widowed and have other issues to tend to. besides, the economy of this country has hit many on the face and that innocent woman, who stays at the centre up to the ghostly nights, would like to go home and do other duties to come up with food on the table.
      It has been a weakness of Kenyans to appreciate the efforts of those people who bare the heaviest brunt in the shaping up of this country. may be, this would suggest why many youth would prefer, a poor paying job to slavery with the farms that yield quite a slave out of men and women who work so hard to build this nation. Many have died out of back pains and pneumonia in this region and other regions just because the returns fro tea farming are unable to cater for their medical services.
    Compounded by the laxity of the factory to collect tea, the farmers also suffer from heavy loans bestowed on them by the factory. The farmers are forced to take Fertilizers for their tea on yearly basis and the pay is heavily deducted from the monthly income they earn. To add insult to injury, the factory has introduced a scheme of giving farmers gumboots, gloves and Plastic overalls to use when plucking tea, and those too do not come cheaply!