The announcement by President Uhuru Kenyatta on 28th April 2016 that PriceWaterhouse coopers the joint receivers of PanPaper Mills had reached an agreement with a strategic investor (read the Rai Group) to purchase the in receivership and closed for the last seven years plans must be treated with caution and apprehension.
After all in 2010 President Mwai Kibaki equally with fanfare announced the revival of PanPaper in a colourful ceremony at Webuye of switching on the factory machines but which not long after fell silent.
The more worrisome aspect of the President Uhuru Kenyatta’s announcement on PanPaper is that the Mill in which the Government of Kenya had a substantial stake has been sold to the Rai family the owners of West Kenya Sugar Company and Raiply Timber manufacturers in Eldoret who own an array of other industries in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
It is to be noted that PanPaper collapsed in 2009 under the stewardship of yet, another Asian family the Birla’s from India who took off from Webuye to India and no efforts were ever taken to hold them accountable for economic crimes against the people of western Kenya and the Nation of Kenya.
The sale of PanPaper to the Rai Group must be interrogated to establish whether it is an open, transparent and accountable transaction or it is an exercise in ripping off the people of Bungoma County and Kenya through a game of mirrors and smoke and where public assets are gifted to private cartels, the scenario that made Chief Justice Willy Mutunga to state recently that Kenya’s economy is a bandit economy under the grip of economic bandits.
They say that the devil is in the details and the Members of the National Assembly from Bungoma County must get the relevant National Assembly Committee to scrutinize with a toothcomb the details of the Rai Group purchase of PanPper. What was the value of PanPaper? How can it have been sold at paltry Shs900 million yet the Grand Coalition Government pumped in the Plant Shs 1.2 billion on revival alone?
What acreage of land did the Plant own and how much did the defunct Webuye Town Council own and how had the land jointly owned distributed between the two? What is the value of the land assigned to PanPaper and is it worth less or more than the Shs900 million the Rai Group is paying for PanPaper? What was the value of the machinery? What was the reserve price set for the sale of PanPaper whose indebtedness was more than Shs 3 billion when it went under? Does the sale make economic sense or is it a con?
The people of Bungoma County must be cautious that the hunger for industries jobs offered by the so called new investor is not achieved at the altar of a massive rip-off of their County wealth in the land on which PanPaper sits donated by them when PanPaper was conceived as a State Corporation in the 1970’s. The land on which PanPaper is located just like the land on which Nzoia Sugar Company is located is ancestral land of the people of Bungoma County and ought not to be transferred to any person who purchases those two factories as strategic investors or whatever they may be called but it must be leased to them.
The further reason for apprehension in the sale of PanPaper is that it’s a known secret that the Rai family are known close business associates of the Kenyatta family and there is no knowing whether or not they (the Rai’s) have exploited that nexus to arm twist the Receivers to sell PanPaper to them for a song or throw away price.
There are hard questions that must be answered in the sale of PanPaper Mills to the Rai family as that is what openness, transparency and accountability set out in the national values under the Constitution of Kenya 2010 dictates.
The people of Western Kenya are yearning for investors to setup factories in the region to create employment but that hunger for industries must be satisfied by investors who are genuine and transparent but must not be through wheel dealing, racketeering and taking away the wealth and heritage of the region through games of mirrors and smoke.
If the Rai family takeover, purchase of PanPaper Mills meets the test of transparency and accountability then by all means they are to be given kudos but if the takeover is imprinted with dubious dealings then the region must reject the takeover as an endeavour in economic marginalization of Western Kenya. Elected leaders of Western Kenya tread carefully on the shenanigans of the sale and re-opening of PanPaper Mills?
Those leaders from western Kenya who were in State house when president Uhuru Kenyatta made the announcement better interrogate the cleanliness or otherwise of the sale of PanPaper to the Rai family before hipping praise on the sale of PanPaper. Is that sale a Curse or a Blessing? Time will tell and soon.