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Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mwangi Kiunjuri has explained how illegal sugar imported into the country might have been contaminated with poisonous compounds such as mercury and copper.
Speaking on Monday when he appeared before Parliament Committees probing the contraband sugar scandal, Kiunjuri said the sweetener may have been contaminated in the high seas.
He said some importers ferried the commodity from abroad in open and dirty vessels that had been used to carry fertilizer, coal and other poisonous materials.
Kiunjuri said the National Treasury was to blame for the dumping of over one billion kilos of contraband sugar into the Kenyan market. He said the National Treasury issued a gazette notice dated May 2017, which opened the window for anyone to import sugar duty-free.
The said notice reportedly failed to specify details of the quality and quantity of the sugar to be imported, a loophole that unscrupulous traders could have exploited to bring bad sugar into the country.
More than 370 importers took advantage of the window to flood the market with sugar, despite the country having only 12 licensed millers. Some 350,000 metric tonnes is among raw sugar feared to contain mercury, copper and lead that found its way into the country.
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I agree with you we should not be importing sugar, when we can grow the sugar-canes in kenya, this would provide jobs which we desperately need.
Hopefully Mheshimiwa Mwangi Kiunjuri will be sentenced in jail for 3 years by the same judge who sentenced the
cat-meat selling Mheshimiwa for 3 years.
Kiunjuri, if you knew all along that the sugar was not fit for human consumption and that it was handled in unhealthy ways, why did you have to wait for Matiangi to come along? Why didn’t you act before he did? You should be held as an accomplice in infecting and poisoning Kenyans. Who were you protecting?
Have the bongolala government recalled the sugar that is in Kiosks, shops, supermarkets, small warehouses etc
Mwangi Kiunjuri should also say how much he made.
Why is Kenya importing sugar when we can grow our own in the country? For sure there is gross mismanagement esp with the millers and higher cost of production etc but why is the gova importing or allowing others to import sugar. More so, why by sea when we have sugar in Uganda. Kiujuri and trade CS and others should explain this.