Sugar Cane poaching forces Mumias Sugar to be shut

The ailing Mumias Sugar Company may be back to the economic Intensive Care Unit as its operations were halted indefinitely on Tuesday.

The ailing millers goes down barely a year after being “bailed” out of its economic woes by the government. The company was closed down in what the management said was as a result of sugarcane poaching by other millers.

The management said that the company had invested a lot of money in sugarcane but the income from the same has been more of a mystery.

The company now blame other sugar millers who are approaching farmers and wooing them with cash and then taking away the sugarcane from their farms.

They said some millers are even buying the sugarcane while it is on transit to the factory leading to the miller, Mumias, incurring the losses.

The company said that it has only been able to get 63 percent of the sugarcane that it had invested in while the remaining 37 percent has been poached by other millers in the region.

The government released one billion shillings to shield the miller from suffering the same fate that Pan Paper mill in Webuye Bungoma County had suffered by going under receivership.

The company, however, maintains that not all the money pledged by the government was released. The government is yet to release 870 million shillings meaning that only 270 million shillings has been disbursed so far.

Mumias Sugar Company has been under economic turmoil and at one point it almost went under receivership was it not for the coming in of the government.

Economic analysts, however, say that the government has done little to help the miller as not all the cash that had been promised was disbursed.

Politicians have been trading words as to who was responsible for the coming down of Mumias Sugar Company and up to date, no individual has been brought to book concerning the same.

Now farmers who had already delivered their sugarcane to the miller have been left in a limbo not knowing whether they will receive their payments.

Most farmers in the region appear to have lost trust in the miller making them opt for other millers who are to pay even before the sugarcane reaches their respective mills.