One of President Kibaki's pet projects right from the beginning has been reviving the Kenya Meat Commission. He talked about it often during his presidential campaign and he has mentioned it often in speeches since landing at State House.
About two weeks ago, President Kibaki reopened the factory and casual observers must have been delighted. Two days ago Livestock Minister Joseph Munyao visited the company's depot at Landhies Road in Nairobi and announced that the factory was still on a trial run.
What do they mean a trial run?
A trial run means that there is no commitment on the part of the government yet to run this parastatal as a going concern. The "waters are being tested" so to speak. Which is not a bad idea. It is instructive that company officials were not willing to release any figures except future projections. The target is to slaughter and process 1000 animals a day.
How many jobs will that create? Let us really go wildly optimistic and say that it will create 100 jobs. And support maybe another 500 families of herders by giving them a ready reliable market for selling their animals. That is a drop in the ocean. I am not saying it is bad to revive old parastatals. What I am asking is, how viable is this, the President's pet project?
More so when rumours are rife amongst the donor community as to why the factory was not revived during the Moi days despite the Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi Corporations' great interest in the project. The deal the Japs had in mind was to provide machinery for processing and to market the finished products in the world markets through one of their subsidiary companies. Government was to source funding elsewhere, which should not have been a problem, because any businessman will tell you that when the marketing has been finalized you already have the cash in your hands, it is just a matter of time before you start physically counting it. This deal fell through.
It is believed that the reason was because the Japs were not prepared to give a kickback (cash in advance) to the government officials involved in reviving the stalled factory. You can imagine how stupid we all look now scurrying around trying again to revive the project. You can scream all you can that that was Kanu, but then the Japs and donor community knows it was Kenya and Kenyans that they were dealing with. They also know like most Kenyans do by now, that nothing has really changed.
The clincher as Hon Munyao left the brief function at the Landhies depot was his directive that the scrap metal dealers and a furniture trader operating along a road leading to the depot will have to leave within a month. You decide for yourself the number of desperate livelihoods that will be affected by this directive.
To make matters worse, the information I have in hand tells me that barring a major donor stepping in at the eleventh hour to save the day, that factory will never be fully operational before 2007 and reaching 1,000 animals per day is a laughable pipe dream for now.
Then we wonder why the crime rate has spiraled out of control.
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I hear that Botswana copied the blueprint of our KMC to the letter and to this day run a very successful meat industry! That means that it's not the idea but the people that operated our KMC who are incompetent.
ReplyDeleteWhen Munyao was appointed 4 years ago, to revive KMC my hopes were dashed immediately. How can you put an old man that was a part & parcel of the generation that ran down KMC in charge of reviving it?
How many Bcom-Marketing or MBA graduates are running around the country that could surely do some magic on that industry? Wouldn't that help with job creation?
Kibaki's cutting of the ribbon (at his ever slow pace) at the re-opening and Munyao's half-backed visit to the Landhies depot are nails on the coffin for me rather than rays of hope.