Written by Rosemary Wachiye 2012-06-12 19:00:00 Read 463 Times

Farmers in Bungoma Tuesday morning demonstrated outside the National Cereals and Produce Board demanding to be issued with fertilizer that they have paid for.

The farmers claimed that 960 bags of fertilizer arrived Monday at the board and demanded the Depot Manager to explain to them whom he had sold to and yet the loyal farmers had not been issued with any.

"The bags of fertilizer arrived yesterday at 10 AM in the morning, by 5 pm they stopped distributing and told us to come back today (Tuesday), but when we came in the morning we were told there is no fertilizer, where did it go?" asked the farmers.

They also revealed that the depot received 960 bags of fertilizer and accused the officials in charge of distribution as being corrupt as they only favored those farmers who bought in bulk leaving out farmers requesting for small quantities.

"Huge quantities of fertilizer were sold to business men who purport to be farmers leaving out genuine farmers who are in need of only one or two bags," said Mr.Mark Opicho, a farmer.

The farmers complained that the fertilizer meant for Bungoma farmers was being sold out to non residents and called for scrutiny on those issued with the inputs.

They also explained that if the fertilizer distribution is delayed, their crops would have overgrown the top dressing stage. However, the Depot Manager in charge of the Bungoma NCPB Mr. Peter Obuba dismissed the claims saying that board received only 720 bags of fertilizers and not 960 as they claimed.

Mr.Obuba said, the received fertilizer was evenly distributed to over 100 farmers and he wondered why farmers claimed that him and his officials were corrupt.

 "We are trying our level best to serve the farmers needs, but the demand is higher than the supply we get that is why all that we received yesterday got finished before we could distribute them to all farmers," said Mr.Obuba. He also explained that their main set back in meeting demand is transportation.

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