PHOTO CAPTION: KALRO, Director General Dr. Eliud Kireger Countless coffee connoisseurs regard Kenyan coffee to be the best in the world.
Needless to say, the work of esteemed experts at the Coffee Research Institute – part of the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) – has been integral to this success.
But despite providing years of selfless service, workers at CRI are grumbling over poor remuneration.
They accuse the company of purposely delaying their career progression by denying them job permanency.
The more than a hundred (100) staffers are employed on a 3-month contractual basis, which sees them earn a meagre wage with no benefits.
Writing to this blog on Thursday, October 30, a source at the research institute frustratedly revealed that all their attempts to seek reprieve have proved futile, as whenever the matter is raised, trade union officials are quickly compromised into silence. “Hi Nyakundi, Kindly share our plight by making it public. I am a contractual worker with 120 others working for the Coffee Research Institute. As a diploma holder, I earn only 10k na sina any benefits. We get only a 3-month renewable contract. They need us, and they know it, so it just gets renewed automatically but won't hire us or add a penny for the last ten years. We have tried trade unions, lakini wanapewa kitu we guess. They go silent. Jameni twaumia 100. The management has ignored our cry totally. Wamulike at least we get some help. 120 direct families, wanalala njaaa mahali. More than those indirect families are facing the same problem. Kindly help us,” the source writes. PHOTO CAPTION: Dr. Elijah Gichuru, Institute Director, at CRI in Ruiru Located in Ruiru, just outside Nairobi, some work of CRI includes; coffee breeding, quality analysis, research focused on hastening crop development and analysis of growing domestic coffee consumption.
In the last one year, CRI has identified 92 Technologies, Innovations and Management Practices (TIMPS) in the Coffee value chain of which at least 62 intervention measures are ready for promotion.
This moves comes after the sector recorded a decline in production down to 34,000 tonnes from a peak of 128,000 tonnes in 1988 with a drop in Coffee earnings from 500 million dollars to 250 million dollars during the previous seasons.
Experts hold that increasing coffee production is essential considering it is estimated that over 700,000 families in the country derive livelihood directly from coffee.