Six directors at the Michiimukuru Tea Factory in Tigania East, Meru County, have been ordered to vacate their seats to allow for a probe into the factory’s mismanagement of funds claims.
Paul Rono, the Agriculture Principal Secretary (PS), ordered their immediate departure when he visited the factory on a fact-finding trip on Saturday, November 23.
“Directors should step aside and the ones that have been placed in interim capacity should stay and not steal the farmers’ money,” Rono said.
“Even these ones, if I find they have stolen anything, we will punish them as well. There is no peace here. All those directors who have perpetrated these crimes should step aside and let investigations happen.”
The trip had been necessitated by protests by the farmers affiliated with the tea factory last month after they felt their grievances were being ignored.
The farmers decried the low bonuses they received from the oldest tea factory in the region despite producing quality tea in large quantities.
They had previously voted to remove all 6 directors at an Annual General Meeting (AGM) in September, a decision that Rono upheld and launched a probe into the factory finances.
He announced that a team from Nairobi would be visiting the factory as soon as next week to begin the investigation.
Despite being the oldest tea factory in the county, Michiimikuru is not immune to administration wrangles that often plague factories and societies across the country with farmers often raising the same issues concerning low bonuses.
In a similar event in September, Cooperatives and MSME’s Cabinet Secretary Wycliffe Oparanya sent the entire management team at Kangunu Cooperative Society in Murang'a County packing citing gross misconduct.
The step had been necessitated by similar protests by the farmers who noted that the directors were misappropriating their funds by imposing a compulsory five per cent deduction on their bonuses.
Immediately after firing the management department, Oparanya had ordered fresh elections in fourteen days to replace them.
