The New Kenya Planters Cooperative Union (KPCU) has denied claims that it was behind the stealing of coffee beans from factories in Meru County.
This comes after an incident a fortnight ago where coffee worth millions of shillings was stolen from Kaguru Farmers Cooperative Society in Imenti South.
Following the incident, Meru County Millers Chairman Zablon Mbabu claimed that one of the New KPCU directors in Meru County was behind the stealing since one of the sacks that was left at the scene bore his name.
But addressing the press on Wednesday, New KPCU Chairman Daniel Chemnoo said theirs was a state corporation whose sole purpose was to mill and market farmers’ coffee all over the country.
“New KPCU was registered in 2019 for milling, marketing and delivering cherry funds to improve coffee production in Kenya which currently stands at 51,000 metric tons from a high of 132,000 metric tons about 32 years ago.”
As a corporation, therefore, we dissociate entirely from remarks made by Mr Mbabu that associated theft of coffee to the coming of New KPCU,” said Mr Chemnoo.
He added that last year, the Cabinet Secretary for Interior and National Administration Professor Kithure Kindiki asked all Coffee factories and estate farms to seek security from police whenever they have coffee in their stores and that all cooperatives need to have adopted this long ago to thwart any theft attempts.
“All farmers’ cooperative societies need to have their premises secured and therefore as new KPCU we have no hand in what happened in Kaguru farmers’ cooperative society,” said Mr Chemnoo.
He posed: “How come they were storing coffee and they had no proper security of the factory?
Mr Chemnoo termed Mr Mbabu’s claims as baseless information that was out to ruin their reputation.
He added: “We want to tell people that as an entity we market coffee from all over the country and we are not ready to be tagged with activities that don’t augur well with us. Anyone with negative information must substantiate it or apologise lest we sue him.”
But in a quick rejoinder, Mr Mbabu maintained that the person whose name appeared on the sack dropped at the crime scene was the principal suspect and that he was ready to say this even in a court of law.
On the issue of hiring armed policemen, Mr Mbabu said that most of the cooperative societies were struggling to produce viable coffee to even pay their members well and therefore hiring security officers was not applicable.
He said the government should take up the issue since it was also benefiting from the dollars earned from coffee farming.
By Dickson Mwiti
