House summons minister over contaminated food

Deputy Speaker Farah Maalim has summoned a Cabinet minister to address the controversy over the supply of contaminated food to school-going children.

Mr Maalim  ordered Public Health minister Beth Mugo to explain to the House without failure Wednesday afternoon on the the distribution of tainted unimix -- a high protein food that comprises maize and soya which is fortified with vitamins and minerals supplied-- to parts of Eastern, North Eastern and Coast.

As the order on Ms Mugo came, MPs sensationally revealed that there were big names with connections in government keen to hush-up the scandal.

Yatta MP Charles Kilonzo said that the top shareholders and board members of Proctor & Allan were behind the intimidation campaign. A Mr Charles Nyachae and Mr Eddy Njoroge, are some of the influential people that the Yatta MP linked to the influence-peddling.

Ms Mugo was scheduled to issue a statement in Parliament, but left the debating chamber just when MPs sought the statement.

The bitter legislators asked the Deputy Speaker to direct that should she fail to issue the statement, she should be sanctioned.

The lawmakers said journalists had also been threatened not to publish the story. 362 metric tonnes of Unimix, by Proctor & Allan and Sai Millers as famine relief, had been recalled because it was contaminated with aflatoxin.

The Kenya Bureau of Standards was also on the crosshairs of the MPs as they sought to know the circumstances under which the maize was allowed into the country. The Parliamentary Committee on Health and that on Agriculture have already begun the investigations into the matter and have summoned the national standards’ body.

The chairman of the Agriculture Committee John Mututho said the two millers had also been summoned to appear before Parliament next week.

“It’s a matter of life and death. How do they feed Kenyans this way? We’re not dogs. It is a stab on the back, because this was not even government money. It was money donated by poor Kenyans to feed their fellow citizens,” Mr Mututho told the Nation shortly after his committee meeting in Parliament buildings.

Turkana Central MP Ekwee Ethuro termed the distribution of tainted food to hungry children as the “height of irresponsibility for the government”.

“We all used to hear in the past about the government mortgaging the future generations of the republic through misappropriation of loans; now we have a situation where we’re not mortgaging our future, but killing that future,” added the Deputy Speaker before he instructed Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta to make sure that Ms Mugo made it to the House in the afternoon to issue the statement.

“There’s nothing more urgent that our children consuming unimix that has high content of aflatoxin,” the Deputy Speaker said noting that he won’t give in to any excuses for a delay in addressing the controversy

Dr Boni Khalwale (Ikolomani) said of Ms Mugo : “ She’s been here, she’s deliberately walked out. Today, to the minister, a few Kenyan children dying is good riddance. There’s nothing personal that I am prosecuting here. To offload foodstuff that were stuck in their stores (in the name of humanitarian aid is wrong).”