House team digs into coffee institute woes
National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi has directed the Agriculture Committee to investigate the problems bedeviling the Coffee Research Institute (CRI).
The committee has one month to table its report before the House, with recommendations on how to save the institution from collapse.
Muturis’s directive comes days after Tongaren MP Eseli Simiyu last Thursday called for intervention to cushion the agency from crumbling, terming it a critical component in research for the cash crop development.
Muturi called out the Agriculture Committee for failure to take up the matter, only to wait for a member to raise it despite the importance of the cash crop in the country’s economy.
“One would have expected the committee to carry out its work diligently and not to wait for members to inform them,” he said.
Eseli said the research agency had been neglected by the government for far too long, adding that time has come for the legislature to come up with recommendations which will compel the State to intervene.
“The place looks like a ghost estate where nothing is going on and that is very dangerous. You cannot find employees. They go for months without salaries,” he said.
Agriculture Principal Secretary Hamadi Boga last week told MPs that government has not set aside funds for the institute.
