Ministry of Agriculture imported fertilizer from China, MPs

Ministry of Agriculture imported fertilizer from China, MPs

Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture says that it will summon acting Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohammed over allegations of illegal importation of fake fertiliser.

It has emerged that an unnamed company, which has been blacklisted from importing sugar, imported 10,000 metric tonnes of NPK fertiliser without a license with the consignment arriving at the Port of Mombasa on May 13th, 2014.

The fertiliser is said to be part of 17,000 metric tonnes imported from China by the Ministry of Agriculture on behalf of the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) and the blacklisted private company.

Appearing before the commission on Monday, Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) coast regional manager Vincent K Cheruiyot and other officials had a difficult time explaining how 4,000 metric tonnes of the fake fertiliser was discharged at the port and distributed to farmers despite suspicion that it was of substandard quality.

According to Cheruiyot, the bureau had earlier stopped the offloading of the consignment at the port but later directed that the exercise proceeds.

Cheruiyot however found himself on the spot when he claimed that he had communicated to government officials not to sell the fertiliser to farmers raising the question why he had ordered its clearance in the first place.

Citizen TV has learned that the private company had been awarded a tender to supply fertiliser to the Ministry of Agriculture for three years with this being its first delivery.

In his defence, the Kenya Port Authority (KPA) Operations manager Twilit Khakis said the authority had done its duty of offloading the cargo as requested by NCPB and KEBS and had not committed any crime by doing so.

In a bid to unravel the under dealings involved in the importation and distribution of the fertiliser, the committee, led by its chair Adan Mohamed Noor, will be seeking to get answers to all the hard questions pertaining the deal from the Agriculture CS when and if he appears before it.

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KEBS NCPB ministry of agriculture Adan Mohammed Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture

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