Leaders from Western region led by Bungoma senator Moses Wetangula have called on Cabinet Secretaries who have been criss-crossing the region to provide evidence in the waiver of debts owed to the state by ailing sugar factories.
Wetangula dared Devolution CS Eugine Wamalwa and his agriculture counterpart Peter Munya to produce the documented evidence with the relevant instruments to confirm that Nzoia Sugar company debts have been waived.
“The people of western region are not fools, they know what it means by development and they have seen the bad states of the companies and being told that the debts have been waived without evidence is zero work,” Wetangula said.
His statement was echoed by Dan Wanyama, Webuye West member of the parliament who said that the cabinet has no mandate to waive a debt without the input of the national assembly.
“We are the people who allocate resources, I tried hard to include in the budget but when we approached Munya he declined to factor in Money for the ailing factories and so farmers know the truth. If indeed the president is serious, he should bring a paper in parliament to the committee of agriculture to deal with the issue,” he said
Wanyama said that the parliament must understand the period and how these debts accrued before the decision is made.
“It might be crude creditors who want to pay themselves or the money ending up going to the wrong people. Munya was evasive by talking about the treasury making paper work since he knew the process was not right but came in to give Wamalwa PR to get political mileage,” Wanyama added.
This comes a week after the recent visit of CS Wamalwa and Munya who assured the farmers that the debts that were holding the companies down had been written off to allow the leasing of the companies for it to go back to its normal operation.
They however came in solidarity with the most recent declaration by the president who had ordered that the cabinet secretaries are not allowed to move out of Nairobi after the surge in Covid-19 cases across the country.
Wetangula stated that their meetings have been suspended following the rampant increase of the cases in western region most specifically in Busia County.
