The County Governments of Kakamega and Bungoma have each publicly declared they intend to establish a milk processing plant for their dairy farming sector. Those intentions are to be applauded but equally to be interrogated lest the taxpayers’ resources be committed to projects that may be destined to fail as the history of publicly funded industries in Western Kenya attest. Show us one that is successful and we will show you twenty failed ones.
But wait a minute are these two Counties trying to climb the tree from the top on the question of setting up milk processing plants? Can the Counties in the Constitutional imperative of public participation in public projects put forward their preparedness to establish sustainable milk processing plants and industries that will generate economic empowerment to their residents?
The first building block of a milk processing industry is the ready availability of the only raw material for such an industry milk supply. Can the Counties of Kakamega, Bungoma demonstrate how many dairy farmers of what quality producing what quantities of milk per day they have now who will supply milk to their proposed milk processing industry? Let them not fall prey to the lie that they will first establish the dairy plant and then plead with the local people to start keeping dairy animals to supply their milk processing plant with milk. That will be a cropper. The Counties must develop a quantifiable base of dairy farmers first before they purport to commit taxpayers’ money on milk processing plants that may end up with no milk.
For Bungoma County, can the County government tell the residents how much public money if any had been sunk by the previous County government in the much-hyped chicken factory in Chwele, a leather factory in Bungoma town, the never performing Kitinda Dairy plant and why all of them have failed to perform and make any economic impact in the County? They can be rightly called white elephant projects that have gobbled up taxpayers’ resources with no return to the people.
The truth is that those propagating the populist notions of setting up ill-thought projects like milk processing plants without first establishing a credible base of dairy farmers is that there are opportunities to fleece public resources in setting up such projects through inflated procurements rather than systematically building the capacities for the dairy farming by first ensuring there are enough veterinary experts in the County. Second, the electorate is educated on the economic benefits of why they should embrace dairy farming as it assures them daily, weekly, monthly income and thirdly the same Counties can establish a revolving fund for those who wish to take up dairy farming to borrow money from the fund and steadily grow dairy farming.
There are already existing leading companies, notably KCC and Brookeside that can purchase milk from any farmer anywhere in Kenya and it is not necessary for Kakamega and Bungoma Counties to establish tiny factories that will have no economies of scale. Those two Counties should develop dairy farmers rather than setting up plants. The infrastructure of dairy farming is completely non-existent in the two Counties and that is what they must develop first before running to establish milk processing plants. It is in developing dairy farmers that the residents are empowered as they will attain purchasing power from earnings from selling milk. The dairy plant will only empower the few County officials who steer the project through cutting deals.
We must get our economics right otherwise our elected leaders will continue wasting scarce taxpayers’ resources on white elephant projects destined to fail and a few crooks collect millions of shillings in the name of developing our counties when in actual fact that was never possible and they knew it from start.
The electorate must wake up and resist being hoodwinked with unsustainable projects by Counties. Interrogate them and reject those that are being structured upside down and let the correct procedures be followed. Develop the farming capacity first, then set up processing facilities next if that is necessary.
