MPs have recommended that Kenafric Industries Limited be expunged from a report by the Agriculture, Livestock and Co-operatives Committee on the crisis facing the sugar industry.
On March 6, 2015, legislators resolved not to receive submissions from Kenafric despite a request by the company’s advocates and instead urged it to seek redress after finalisation of the report, if it felt aggrieved.
A parliamentary team has cleared one of Kenya’s largest confectionery firms from a damning report that implicated it as one of the manufacturers that repackage imported industrial sugar for sale locally as table sugar.
The Committee on Implementation has recommended that Kenafric Industries Limited be expunged from a report by the Agriculture, Livestock and Co-operatives Committee on the crisis facing the sugar industry.
The team had called for the cancellation of import licences for Kenafric Industries, Czarnikov EA Ltd, Stuntwave Ltd, Mshale Commodities and Rising Star Commodities Ltd.
On March 6, 2015, the committee resolved not to receive submissions from Kenafric despite a request by the company’s advocates and instead urged it to seek redress after finalisation of the report, if it felt aggrieved.
The report, in effect, condemned Kenafric without giving it a hearing and the company moved to court, suing the Speaker of the National Assembly Justin Muturi. The Speaker in August ruled that the Committee on Implementation should give Kenafric a chance to present its case for reconsideration as well as offer the House an opportunity to remedy a procedural oversight.
The committee chaired by Moitalel ole Kenta invited Kenafric, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Kenya Sugar Directorate to hear their case.
The committee said the basis of the allegations against Kenafric came from the Sugar Directorate, then Kenya Sugar Board, and the Agriculture Committee.
Mr Kenta has now recommended that the House reconsider its resolution.
“The committee recommends that the House expunges the name ‘Kenafric Industries Limited’ from its resolution of February 24, 2016, as contained in its recommendation of the Report by the Departmental Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Co-operatives on the Crisis Facing the Sugar Industry in Kenya,” Mr Kenta said in a new report.
Kenafric Industries chairman Bharat Shah told MPs that the company had observed the terms of its licence in the over 30 years it had been in the sugar importation business.
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