By Mulengera Reporters
During the Tuesday stakeholders meeting Ministers David Bahati and Evelyn Anite jointly chaired at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala, hundreds of sugarcane growers charged at top government officials including Ministers and Ministries’ technocrats for being too fearful whenever called upon to crack the whip against sugar manufacturing giants.
Madhvani Group-owned Kakira Sugar was given as an example of those sugar manufacturers who have become too big to be regulated. The meeting had been convened at the instigation of the Speaker of Parliament to whom cane growers petitioned objecting to the 17th March directive in which Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja banned and stopped all roadside weigh bridge operations in Buganda and Busoga regions.
The weigh bridges are used to ascertain the quantity of any grower’s cane before the same gets supplied to the sugar millers who use it as a raw material to manufacture sugar. Nabbanja, whose directive cane growers say stood to benefit big players like Kakira and Kinyara Sugar, was controversially justified on grounds that weigh bridge operators (who are traders and not necessarily millers) were promoting child labor at sugarcane plantations, the harvesting of premature cane and diluting of quality besides enabling sugarcane thefts.
The big players claim these are middle men who risk distorting the pricing regime for the sugarcane as a raw material. Weigh bridge operators are also accused of complicating the relationship between established millers or sugar manufacturers and contracted growers. These are farmers who the miller guarantees to a bank to be given a loan to promote cane growing; some have been enabled to use such loans to purchase trucks used to transport cane to the factory.
The big players like Kakira claim that such contracted farmers end up getting lured by prospects of higher prices to sell their cane to some other millers and in effect breach contractual obligations. Bahati said that the sugar industry is too important for such wrangling to be disregarded. He clarified that the industry, as of last Financial Year, contributed 4% (over Shs1trn) of the total tax collection by URA. He also reflected on the fact that the sugar industry is responsible for 10% of Uganda’s GDP, which is why the President and Speaker of Parliament consider the industry too important to be disregarded.
As a major player in this industry since the 1950s, Kakira has its own nucleus sugarcane plantations but still needs much more hence reliance on out growers who insist on using private weigh bridges (at a fee) in order to verify and ascertain the quantity supplied instead of solely relying on or merely accepting what the millers declare. Millers like Kakira have been accused of falsifying measurements in order to pay out growers less while maximising profits for themselves.
In many cases, the millers are accused of under declaring tonnage (cane is measured in tons). So, the information obtained from autonomous weigh bridges is used for comparison purposes, while ascertaining what is declared by the miller upon receiving the same cane. The big players like Kakira and Kinyara don’t want this yet the newly amended sugar Act requires maximum transparency in such measurements.
So, in stopping the roadside weigh bridge operations, Nabbanja relied on all these claims by large millers and directed immediate stoppage. Cane growers went up in arms immediately making it clear that roadside weigh bridges help them to viably remain in the cane growing business because many of them lack permits to supply to the big millers directly.
They also lack transport means to directly take their cane to the millers because many of them have their manufacturing premises located as far away as 40kms from the small holder’s plantation. Covering all that distance in transport costs eats into the farmer’s profit besides exposure to risks such as accidents on the way, in case a truck overturns.
Out growers are also concerned about the millers’ inability to promptly pay the price per ton (some delay for as long as 4 months). Long queues of trucks seeking to deliver the harvested cane at the millers’ premises is another inconvenience. In some cases, such queues can be as long as 1km, if not more.
At the Bahati meeting, cane growers especially those from Busoga referred to two meetings, including one in Mayuge, where the President clearly pronounced himself directing that the roadside weigh bridges remain as the same is permitted under the law.
He also directed that the 5% of the total price per ton that was being deducted from out growers (to cater for trash and potential quality inadequacies) be immediately stopped. The President’s directives were subsequently put in writing and proclaimed.
Yet Kakira top executives have continued being hostile to the idea of roadside weigh bridges, against which the company’s representatives spoke during Bahati’s Tuesday meeting. This prompted Minister Persis Namuganza, who represented Rebecca Kadaga aka Mama Busoga at the meeting, to call out Kakira.
Fearless as always, Namuganza made it clear that such sugar giants’ defiance of the President won’t be tolerated. She made it clear that, much as Kakira’s contribution to growing the sugar industry for all these years is well appreciated, monopolistic tendencies and efforts to suffocate new entrants wouldn’t be tolerated.
She said that elected leaders in Busoga were ready to stand up for cane growers and also for the new entrants into the sugar business because Uganda is a free market economy.
The cane growers at the meeting and representatives of the relevant cooperatives they come from also castigated Kakira for continuing to deduct the 5% trash fee even months after the President clearly pronounced himself stopping the same. Namuganza said there must be consequences for this defiance since the President’s directives have power of law.
When the delegation from the line Ministry of Trade and officials from the sugar Council seemed reluctant to condemn the sugar giants, out growers in the audience used the plenary session to ask David Bahati to explain who between the President and the Kakira top executives was more powerful than the other.
Some speakers asserted that in rural Busoga, these days many cane growers have been left with no option but to conclude that Kakira Sugar top executives are more feared by government bureaucrats and are actually more powerful than the newly reelected Gen YK Museveni.
While chairing the meeting, David Bahati insisted that such talk be avoided so that the day’s discussion is concentrated on exhausting the talk around Premier Nabbanja’s ban on roadside weigh bridges. Demanding respect for leaders, Bahati quickly shut up angry cane growers who had resorted to using strong language against Premier Robinah Nabbanja.
Company representatives at the meeting, such as the long-serving GM Jimmy Kabeho and David Christopher Mombwe (claimed to speak for 13,000 cane growers), tried to defend Kakira but the out growers-dominated audience was too cruel to them.
They were heckled into silence, with Mr. Ismail Butungo (representing one of the smaller millers) and growers’ leader Peterson Mubiru going personal on Mombwe who they dismissed as a mere sellout who betrayed the thousands of cane growers he purports to represent.
Mombwe claimed that Kakira was opposed to roadside weigh bridges because their operations encouraged the sale of premature cane and child labor too at sugarcane plantations.
Bahati questioned Kabeho to explain why Kakira can only stop premature cane only and only if growers bring their cane directly to their premises as opposed to going through roadside weigh bridge operators. Amidst audience heckling, Mombwe failed to satisfactorily explain how weigh bridge operations were encouraging child labor at sugarcane plantations without making reference to other factors like widespread school dropout tendencies.
