Kenya Meat Commission’s Kibarani factory in Mombasa. The military will takeover the management of the meat processor. [File, Standard] In its 70-year history, Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) has made a profit only once – sometimes in the 1950s.
It has collapsed twice. Facing its third collapse in 2009, KMC largely blamed the Ministry of Defence, one of its top customers, for its woes. This was just three years after its colourful reopening in 2006, having been dormant for 15 years.
Then Managing Commissioner Vincent Ngurare would tell The Standard that the Department of Defence was also one of its top debtors, owing millions. He added that KMC was broke and in need of an urgent government bailout before creditors descended to attach its property.
"Most of our leading customers are government institutions like the Department of Defence and public universities whose debts run into millions of shillings in unpaid for supplies," he said in 2009. READ MORE
And now, the government has placed Kenya’s premier abattoir in the hands of the military in a move meant to turn the debt-ridden State corporation around.
The plan to transfer the assets to Kenya Defence Forces started last October when President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed former Vice Chief of Defence Forces Lieutenant General (rtd) Joseph Kasaon as board chair of KMC in a gazette notice.
The general had resigned in 2018 and was once tipped to be in the running for Commander of Defence Forces.
Many then saw it as the return of old guard, which President Kenyatta has done over the years. However, it sort of heralded the takeover of KMC by the Armed Forces.
Early this year, Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya visited the KMC alongside Gen Kasaon, promising to return in August to check progress of an ongoing modernisation of the commission that would take Sh900 million.
He said KMC had also been allocated money to settle debts, rationalise staff and pay farmers who supplied livestock since 2016.
But in the new development, the Ministry of Defence will move into the Athi River-based facility in a week’s time to take control of the outfit that has spent the bulk of its years as a technically insolvent bottomless pit draining taxpayers’ money, and as one of the country’s finest theatres for looting.This is amid uncertainty on State financial support which sustains it despite the government’s initial investment of Sh1.9 billion after reopening.By the end of 2017, government loans stood at […]