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Citizen Weekly

Sunday 29 March 2015

Campaign for tea seats hots up

Campaigns for Mogogosiek Tea Factory Cheptalal electoral zone in Bomet is in high gear after it failed to take part during rotational elections early this year.
Those in the race include Richard Langat, John Mosonik and former area director Geoffrey Langat who served for one term.
Elections for the zone failed to take off in January after a section of aspirants went to court to stop the polls claiming that procedure was not adhered to.
Richard is likely to replace a former area director since he has a wide knowledge in tea sector and has trained in strategic management and is a resident of Taboino where no director has come from.
Geoffrey  is at the moment unpopular among small scale tea farmers for what they term his antisocial habits and lack public relations and has failed to champion farmers interests.
The election that is scheduled before the end of April will see Richard picked as the new director since he enjoys strong support from both prominent and ordinary farmers in the area.
The electoral zone is in the middle of Kobel Satellite Factory and covers Kitala, Cheptalal, Taboino, Posta, Satiet and Meswondo areas.
Apart from Richard who hails from Taboino area, the rest of the directors have been coming from Cheptalal an issue that is going to give him advantage compared to his two opponents.
Langat, a former director was board of directors chairman for Mogogosiek Factory is still trying his luck to continue as the director.
Others who opted out of the race is former long serving area director Samson Menjo Mosonik who served also as the board of directors chairman for two consecutive terms is not clear why he failed to contest for the seat.
The aspirants have in the last three weeks taken advantage to campaign so as to woo farmers during the ongoing Kenya Tea Development Agency meetings being organised by the agency aimed at sensitising farmers to keep off a section of political leaders out to mislead them on matters affecting the sector.
There are efforts by some leaders to delink counties from the agency and market their tea direct an issue that factory directors have been forced to warn farmers over.
A recent case was where Bomet governor Isaac Ruto said he was consulting tea farmers to accept so that his county to sell tea without necessarily going through the agency an issue that directors and farmers rejected.

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