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Thursday, February 1, 2024 –Major companies in Western Region will not be sold off in the new privatization plan by the State.
President William Ruto who is on a tour in Western Region, in particular Bungoma County, today succumbed to pressure from a section of leaders who told him, to his face, that they will not allow any schemes to privatise their only source of livelihood, Nzoia Sugar factory.
Ruto, instead, said his government had already worked on clearing a whopping sh 50 billion debt owed to the Nzoia Sugar Company which was almost going to the Intensive Care Unit ICU.
While addressing farmers in Nzoia today Thursday February 1, President Ruto broke the news that he had ordered clearing of the debt owed to the sugar miller.
The head of State reaffirmed the government’s commitment to do away with similar debts for the Muhoroni, Chemelil, Soni, and Miwani sugar factories which amounted to sh117 billion.
“I will write off the debts of the three sugar companies…the past three governments have tried but they did not succeed. I want to confirm to you that Nzoia Sugar’s debt of Ksh.50 billion has been written off by the government. Your company is free…we have done the same to the Muhoroni, Chemelil, Soni, Miwani all totalling up to sh.117 billion,” said Ruto.
Sugar companies in Western Kenya have since time immemorial experienced a crisis and his predecessors were unable to write off the debts, thus rendering them unmanageable. He blamed the past administrations.
This, he said, had impacted the industries negatively, leading to the companies being unable to pay their workers and farmers and run their daily operations as required.
He vowed that all farmers would be paid within two days, adding that the sh 1.7 billion debt to farmers by Nzoia Sugar had been waived.
“Even debts like PAYE, and NHIF, NSSF have been written off and we have taken them up as the government and paid them
“We have calculated the cumulative debts owed to farmers and they add up to about Ksh.1.7 billion and we came up with a supplementary budget and we sorted it. In the next two days, every farmer will have been paid. We must sort out the farmers…I will also go and do the same to other sugar farmers,” he stated.
The head of State took his critics head-on accusing them of pushing for the privatization of the companies saying that the State would manage sugar companies and that no company would be sold out to individuals.
Earlier on, DAP-Kenya lawmaker, Jack Wamboka had accused a section of colleagues in UDA Party of plotting to mislead the president on the matter.
Present in the rally was Speaker Moses Wetang’ula who also spoke on the issue as well as area governor Ken Lusaka.
