Thoughts on Yala Swamp & DOMINION's Calvin Burgess vs Raila

[jakaswanga]

DOMINION'S CEO CALVIN BURGESS VS THE LUO KINGPIN, TINGA

The biggest capitalist private investor in Luo Nyanza, CEO Calvin Burgess of Dominion farms, is engaged in an ugly public spat with the greatest politician from that area, honourable Amollo Tinga. This Tinga is also the former prime minister of the RoK. We can comfortably say in Nyanza he has hitherto commanded a religious following, and not just because he is, by pedigree, a royal dynast.

It is a battle royal that shall deserve a study. We keep in mind ....

The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles. –---Marx and Engels.

There is a saying, or rather a warning, to beware of the proxy forms which the primary antagonism in a class society may adopt; wearing a disguise as it were, to hoodwink the gullible of which, unfortunately, the world is awash with!

More about such obfuscations later ….... That later is likely to be when, for instance, we discover the borders of Yala swamp as discussed by Dominion and the defunct Siaya county council, are now indeterminate! And in addition, the new Siaya county authority or government, though an –-----administrative continuity----- inheritor of the 'IOU portfolios and MOU's of the defunct, has a roguish tendency to develop selective memory, wherefore some 'CBA's rumoured to have been entered into before the new constitution which ushered in devolution, tend to be null and void and, yes you guessed it, non-existent!' Such ambiguities and transitional confusion can be hijacked deliberately by opportunists, e.g well-tuned shark lawyers in the service of a new and rising constellation of greed, to create ever more extortion toll points.

The problem with this OFFICIAL cavalier attitude is, just like Lady Justice Hellen Wasilwa of the doctors' CBA denial is discovering in her moments of wakefulness, a non-existent thing may actually exert more influence than a thing which exists. For all we know, God may be non-existent, yet, in many a country, should you venture such a satanic thought in public, off goes your 'blasphemous' head from your neck. Academic freedom their foot!

The lady Judge with a very blind mind was just another partisan, a brain-dead cog used to deliver an intimidating blow to organised labour. These deplorable unionised doctors are inclined toward a new deal in public health care. but there is a scramble out there for the profits of privatised market dominance, a scramble by private investors from within and without, in concert with health insurers and private hospitals, to control and cash in …... in the rising portfolio of health insurance and expenditure in the rising Kenya and the wider EAC. An efficient, working and cherished public health care is a clear and present danger in this profit-oriented cannibalistic thrust.

But we wouldn't dare ask nor expect a colonial-minded apparatchik Judge like Hellen Wasilwa --bandit cant! to do her thinking, would we!? No, Solomons and Nestors are far and rare in-between! And even Pontius Pilatus for that matter!

Here is an informative commentary from the UK on the evolution of their National Health Service after the Thatcherite privatisation storm.

Anyway! BACK TO THE BACK WATERS OF MY NYANZA

Howbeit Big Capital finds itself at war with Big politicians in Siaya Luo, what gives? What, as they say, is? behind this apparent battle royal?

The supreme leader, much occupied elsewhere building his latest ramshackle aka NASA, has not found it up to his dignity nor worth his while to dignify the CEO of Dominion, the land-mover Calvin Burgess, with a rejoinder. This after a much publicised media event in which the swamp-reclaiming American rice-grower accused the Luo Kingpin of sabotage through proxies.

Agwambo has left the fish-farm and sugarcane hobbyist to be torn into by his ever ready coterie of hell-hounds. We now see Gem Mpig Jakoyo ka Midiwo who only a while ago was ever at exposing governor Rasanga's Jubilee-like heists, singing from the same book with his fellow blue-blood.

Midiwo accuses Rasanga of pocketing Sh70 million in Yala Swamp lease deal

Sep. 11, 2016, 12:00 pm
Gem MP Jakoyo Midiwo has accused Siaya Governor Cornel Rasanga of illegally leasing 6,000 acres of Yala Swamp.
Midiwo claimed Rasanga did not follow due process and ended up pocketing Sh70 million in a deal with a company owner identified only as Godavari.
He added that he had documents that incriminated the Governor, the National Land Commission and the National Environment Management Authority.
The swamp currently occupied by Dominion Farm has been in the limelight over the previous MoU terms signed by the defunct county council.
Midiwo insisted that the corruption surrounding the swamp was orchestrated in Rasanga’s office.
He said a process for leasing the land was reached after a county assembly task force indicated the previous terms were null and void.

And here is a blast from the past which points to a running sore, and the dangerous flip-flops that come with populism without an exit strategy.

Siaya rivals to review Dominion Farms deal

Feb. 19, 2013. By ERIC OLOO

SIAYA County governor aspirants have vowed to review a Memorandum of Understanding signed by Siaya, Bondo County Councils and Dominion Farms.
William Oduol (NAPK),Thomas Okore (KNC), Malik Obama and Noah Migudo who are vying for seat, said there was need to review the lease of Yala swamp.
They said the move was aimed at ending land conflicts between the multibillion US Dominion rice farms and the community within the wetland region.

“The persistent conflict at the swamp was lack of community participation in the agreement between the investor and local authorities,” added Oduol. The aspirants were speaking during the Siaya County governor debate at the Siaya Agricultural Training Centre at the weekend.
They argued the agreement will be rendered null and void once the county government comes into effect since the local authorities shall have stopped operating.

Winja blamed the outgoing elected leaders for the persistent tussle between the investor and the wetland land community saying they ignored numerous petitions tabled by the community.

I have always been keen on the presence of Dominion in Yala swamp, Siaya. –-Why, because it is a precious confrontation between a super capitalist operator and, opposite, the most extreme forms of backwardness under the tutelage of regressed politicians. Such politicians never saw a chance for extorting a bribe they didn't cash in on. Neither did they see a chance for swindling the peasantry they didn't utilise. They are permanently caught in a double game between double-crossing the people they represent, and when these rise up, double-crossing the other side, in this case, the private investor whose bribes they grew fat on.

All the trenchant issues facing rural Africa in its rising trajectory called industrialisation via FDI, manifest themselves in this microcosm in Siaya, right in my backyard, the Miguna-alleged Odinga caliphate. It is history compressed in a test-tube, at a lab near me!

A story from Bondo: baby Fred Otieno

www.arc-kenya.org/index.php?pagetitle=Neglected CHild

NEGLECTED CHILD FROM MAJIWA VILLAGE, BONDO DISTRICT,SIAYA COUNTY


Baby Fred Otieno
A case was reported to child protection help desk by ARC-Kenya staff concerning a child who was neglected by the family members and left to struggle on his own.
Upon intervention by the ARO child protection team who visited the home, 3-year-old Fred Otieno was found in a pathetic situation.
Fred sat down next to the door and was peeping through the door to see if anyone was passing bye to say hello. When he heard our voices he greeted “oyawore” meaning “good morning” of which we responded “oyawore ahinya” meaning “good morning to you.

That is the kind of backwater extreme which may not be unique.

DOMINION BREAKS GROUND.

Calvin Burgess is no stranger to working rotten African set-ups. We have seen Dominion in action elsewhere in Africa. In Nigeria. Nigeria is the top African republic where the likes of Sambo Dasuki steal billions of dollars meant for armament procurement, then send soldiers to fight Boko Haram with 2nd world-war museum rifles. Dealing with the immorality, the unscrupulousness, the bestial mentality of public officials and conscienceless politicians of Nigeria, is more than good preparation for navigating the debauched layrinths of the '2nd Oga copycat republic of Kenya!

Friends in high places have always been helpful

Friends of Burgess:Olusegun Obasanjo: The former President of Nigeria calls Burgess "a friend of Nigeria", and has been intimately involved in helping Burgess to secure land in the country. He has acquired 30,000 ha in Taraba State, with the backing of former President Olusegun Obasanjo

Dominion is a primed ruthless, competent capitalist go-getting racket, a top predator, and arriving in Nyanza backyards, it would test Luo cultural sophistication to breaking point. It would use, chew and exhaust the primitive tenets of Luo culture –-like religion and witchcraft which, since Marx, we know are the same thing; it would align with the pretenders to modernity, but spit them out in uncompromising selfishness when they threaten its interests or prove duplicituous fakes (like expensive Lake Basin experts proved to be); and in her boundless aggressiveness she would shock sensibilities which hadn't quite seen it coming when they said yeah, welcome, white saviour.

Burgess set up shop in western Kenya, in a place called Yala Swamp. His idea: to build AfriAfrica'sgest rice farm – Dominion Farms –on 7,000 ha of land he acquired under a 25-year renewable lease agreement. But there was one problem. Thousands of people live,farm and raise livestock on the same land and depend on the same water source. Dominion Farms occupies 40% of the Yala Swamp,but the dam that the company built to irrigate its rice fields has flooded a much larger area and made it practically impossible for the local communities to raise livestock.

Dominion is here to take it all, lamented a man in Bondo side of the swamp.

"I disagree when people say, Oh, you have to preserve the local culture. If you preserve it, people will starve, and you wont have a culture to preserve." –-- Calvin Burgess

Dominion's settlement would be akin to, long ago, when the whiteman identified Winam Gulf (of Kisumu) as a nice place for a port. Then with the impunity and arrogance then typical, the whiteman got on with it. That was the era of colonial political relationships, with the peasantry little more than human wild, and if black and the aristocracy white, then definitely wild game. (This is not to claim the landgrabs of the arid Meles Zenawi and his starved Tigrayans were any kinder!)



Capitalism respects private property yes, but with no 'title-deed' to 'communal land, added to the hubris of the mythical superiority of race, the issue of ownership in the way as understood by capitalism in private property did not arise in the colonial mind. This mind set found profitable too, to allege the native had not enough humanity to concieve of value, wherefore the issue of compensation too, did not arise. It was a conflict doomed to end in a lot of tears and bloodshed in many parts of the world. In Namibia, the Germans just embarked on a systematic mass extermination of the locals, a forerunner to the later holocaust.

PORT FLORENCE AND RAILWAY BEACH POINT

Economically this was
1. the industrial bourgeoisie carrying out their historical revolution of overthrowing feudalism and the aristoaristocracygoing world-wide.
2. the capitalist mode with its missionaric drive toward concentrating capital arrived in Nyanza. The geographical manifestation (of this concentration) would be a large and formal settlement (as an administrative cum industrial center) and it had arrived in pre-capitalist Nyanza, with no intention of beating a retreat. Thereto did Port Florence have only one option, to embrace its capitalist future, a long goodbye to its folklorish past. Yeah, Port Florence, along with Luo politicology, had to come to terms with this new gun-armed God. We had to learn, evolve, accommodate the new, re-orient in the new world, before rebooting name to Kisumu to recapture some semblance of historical identity.

Today, Kisumu the former port Florence, the former KisumO, is the commercial capital of Luo Nyanza, and proudly too, even if it has challenges like a dumping site within its international stadium! –----But that neglect is because the stadium is named after the KANU killer Arap Moi, and not his Luo victim Robert Ouko Seda.

But that is another story.

It was this ruthless, relentless colonial capitalist accumulation which yanked Kisumo off her feudal fame as the 'place of commodity exchange', Ka-Kisuma, batter trade point, and metamorphosed her into a leading damsel of MONETARY, commercialised terms, aka Port Florence. By the time the Luo as Kenyans reclaimed her after independence and rebaptised her off her Flowery English name, KisumO had mutated into a monster far from the occasional bush market it once was. It was now strictly cash terms. A hard and a ruthless place exacting rents, and politically volatile.

Today it is a capital city. The largest in the Miguna caliphate, and it remains politically volatile because like the colonial Port Florence which thwarted mass aspirations, the current Kisumu is not bequeathing itself well in opening new avenues for the self-realisation of her young.

–-'Tholo mal e wi bodaboda e chieng' maliet, royo mana yawuowi!' ----Ball-crushing Bodaboda toil as the choice hustling economic activity of the hordes of young men leaving school, is a tale of bedtime blues the equivalent of the one wrought in central by the abuse of strong alcohol by young men.

But, this clash between a determined capitalism and an unsure peasant mode, this confrontation which brutally transformed Africa, always needs an in-depth because not every aspect has been unravelled and stored away in world libraries.

And so the muddy swamps of Yala throws us a titanic duel. Calvin Burgess versus Raila, in an election year.

And a footnote from the communist manifesto

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.

Now, how much will it cost to expel the monster Dominion from Siaya? I haven't studied the devil in the details of the original lease yet! But the mature bourgeoisie wouldn't have established world hegemony if they were a naive lot, no!?

It takes nothing less than a mobilising revolutionary thought inspiring and organisiing mass participation to tame them. Offering a new deal. The second republic in its Ogaland-like corruption, is far from a new dealer!

[jakaswanga]

Footnote. 1. FANTASIES OF EXPULSION

but what is the alternative to Dominion?

Here is an intimation of new deal which suspiciously echoes the old deal. First the marker to expell the old one.

www.nation.co.ke/counties/Siaya/Proposed-sugar-firm-splits-Siaya-county-leaders/1183322-2863664-txnav7/index.html

Proposed sugar firm splits Siaya County leaders

Wednesday September 9 2015

Multibillion-shilling sugar miller Dominion Farms is entangled in a conflict with residents who don’t want a sugar mill.
The firm wants the factory set up following an agreement it signed with defunct local authorities but locals opposed to it say it will destroy the environment.
They say the firm failed to honour an agreement it reached with locals to hire them as casuals at its inception in Yala in 2003.
It was also supposed to make good use of 3,000 acres that was made available to it and provide bursaries, roads, health centres and electricity.
Several people were injured on Friday when two groups clashed over the establishment of the factory.
Leaders and residents are divided. Five ward representatives led demos against the factory on Friday.

INCITEMENT CLAIMS

Gem MP Jakoyo Midiwo is among those opposed to the sugar mill.
“The company has broken its promises. We cannot allow it to build a factory here,” he said on Saturday.
But Dominion Farms manager Chris Abir insists that the factory will be put up. He said the agreement with the Siaya County Council stood.

So, exit Dominion, no Dominion factory, enter who?

here are the words of
CALVIN BURGESS:

Meanwhile Raila Odinga, ODM Governor Rasanga and the MCA’s are headed to India to find a firm to replace Dominion on our land. They found a company called Godavari Enterprises and then falsified public meeting minutes for meetings, which did not take place. Godavari is actually a subsidiary of Farm Lands of Africa Inc, USA. Upon doing research on this company, it is an over the counter tiny company which is publicly traded with a virtual “Zero Net Worth” and if they were involved with this kind of an operation they would be subject to the same “Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” which would likely send their Directors to prison and impose a $2,000,000.00 USD fine on the company.

More about GODOVARI.

Investor to put Sh8.5bn into sugar cane farming

Monday March 2 2015

www.nation.co.ke/counties/Investor-to-put-Sh85bn-into-sugar-cane-farming/1107872-2640550-pq309l/index.html
Siaya Governor Cornel Rasanga has urged locals to embrace an Asian who wants to invest Sh8.5 billion in cultivation of sugar cane in Yala Swamp.
He said locals stood to gain from many job opportunities as the investment will also include installation of a sugar milling plant.
Mr Rasanga lamented that many developments are failing in the county because of the hostility residents are showing investors.

He added that the county government is currently working on the long term to solve the differences between the Yala Swamp residents and the Dominion Farms.
“We want to ensure the investors and locals coexist and that non feels exploited,” Mr Rasanga said.
“The noise people have been making over such plans has turned away many investors and donors in the past. However, we do not also want to see the rights of the people violated by the investors.”

THE CASE OF THE VANISHED HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS PAID TO SIAYA COUNTY COUNCIL AND THE NEVER MENTIONED RENTS PAID BY DOMINION TO THE COUNTY

In the beginning there was a crime. The crime of fraud. Follow the money and see where the trail ends and the buck stops; the documents are confidentialised but are in the custody of the people's government. They can always be declassified if Siaya were to have some indigenous Omatata. Meanwhile the docs gather dust, just like the TJRC writ, just like the Ndung'u report, the JM and Ouko murder inquiries, and the rest of the documents which tell the story of a nation incapable of neither facing its past, nor coming to terms with its present. A nation beside itself with corruption. A nation dedicated to letting her top criminals go Scot free. Such nations invite syndicated criminals to come and partake to the free for all bonanza.

THE LOOTING MACHINE PLANTED IN AFRICA

Before we come to the ground in Siaya, here are tales from the exposes of such syndicated looting at the continental and international level.

review – ‘the raping of a continent’

The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth

Tom Burgis’s account of the plundering of Africa’s natural resources by huge companies and corrupt regimes is enlightening . After nine years reporting on Africa for the Financial Times, Tom Burgis exposes how the extractive industries have turned into a hideous looting machine, the west guilty of complicity in the raping of a continent. As he says, corruption does not end at the borders; kleptocratic regimes use avaricious allies to sell their commodities and stash illicit cash. “Its proponents include some of the world’s biggest companies, among them blue-chip multinationals in which, if you live in the west and have a pension, your money is almost certainly invested.”

Burgis shows how even the World Bank is linked to this looting, …... The result is a nation such as Nigeria, one of the world’s major oil producers, generating half as much electricity as North Korea – only enough to power one toaster for every 44 of its citizens.

Mighty grand, the hundreds of billions looted from Nigeria where as late as this week, mid February 2017, a former CEO of the national oil company was found with $10M cash in a pit behind his shamba in Kaduna!

Nigeria’s anti-corruption watchdog, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has found what it described as a ‘staggering’ sum of money from a former head of the country’s oil company.
The EFCC said a special operation by its operatives on February 3, 2017; at a property belonging to Dr Andrew Yakubu yielded a sum of $9,772,800 and another sum of £74,000 in cash.
The monies they added was found in a house located in the northern Kaduna State and was kept in a fire proof safe.

See, it is Doctor Andrew Yakubu from Harvard, therefore the strange Kenyan derision that only a lowly hairdresser, Josephine Kabura, could withdraw literal pick-up loads of cash in real time, is utter stupidity. The lesson: you can take your local goat to Yale, call him Saitoti or Ndegwa, but back in the dark continent, the Yaled goat will be no better than your village hairdresser Kafura come to the city! –---and that is a dig at Rotich on the Eurobond for you. It is Yale goats like Dr. Patrick Njoroge at the CBK I am talking about. (who is my eurobond accountant now! I need figures to trash badboy Ndii!)


Dr. Andrew 'Muraguri' Yakubu!

HOW IS THE RAPE MIRRORED CLOSER TO THE GROUND IN SIAYA?

When he arrived in Siaya, Burgess rode by Jeep over pock-marked roads to examine land in an area near where the Yala River empties into Lake Victoria. Local officials told him that past irrigation plans had failed, he says. Burgess recounts how he was greeted by two members of the Luo tribe dressed in tattered Western-style suits. The old men pleaded for help for their people, he says. "I made the decision that night."

Soon thereafter, Dominion secured a 25-year lease on 17,000 acres, with an option to renew for an additional 20 years. Burgess says that to obtain the lease he made a series of agreements in confidential documents signed by members of local councils and tribal chiefs. These agreements were approved by the Kenyan Lands Ministry in Nairobi, says Dorothy N. Angote, the ministry's permanent secretary.

Dominion is obligated to pay a total of $140,000 in rent annually. On top of that, Burgess says he paid the Siaya County Council $100,000 two years ago. A county official conceded that the $100,000 vanished, according to local newspaper reports.

Separately, Burgess says he paid $120,000 to the local Lake Basin Development Authority in 2003. That money also disappeared, he says. Neither the authority nor the county council responded to several requests for comment.

$100,000 VANISHED IN SIAYA? after some Laibon Lenana thumb prints now held secret?

NB: Yala being the home of ace legal minds of legacy like Otieno SM, Aguenge Kodheke, Oki Ombaka, and down the river mouth, rich mouths and minds like PLO Lumumba and ex ODM general Ababu Namwamba, one might be excused for thinking there would be no need for Laibon-Lenana antics orchestrated by a super capitalist predator facing illiterate peasants in their kraal.

But anyway, the cash did not vanish. It was pocketed by people who everybody in Siaya town knows. Then there is where that &140,000 per year goes. –--There was this rumour William Oduol had promised to find the thieves and, may be like Duterte in the Phillipines candidate Ngatia of Kenya, have them stoned to death in Siaya stadium.
Win he did the nominations, and the race, but he was not going to be governor was he? But being just another comprador upstart using populism for a ride to catch up on the gravy train, neither was he going to reveal the nature of, nor the forces behind his 'barring' and corrupt demise. 'Oduol is a mole! A TNA mole!' the sheep were conditioned to happily bleat at the doorstep of their own abatoir.

These are of course some of the untold background stories why the voting-card take-up in Siaya has been below expectations, yet it is the homeground of the Mighty Tinga, a leading candidate in the unseat Uhuru wolf-pack.

Environmental oversight is weak in Kenya. Selalah Okoth, the district officer in Bondo for Kenya's National Environment Management Authority, says she hasn't assessed water or soil there since she took the job in 2004. Okoth cites a lack of resources, saying she fears there could be harmful pollution caused by Dominion.

One would need such samples for a lab analysis to determine which pesticides –-cancer or abortion initiating-- are being used. But no, lack of resources in a county that 'vanishes'' hundred thousands of dollars.
One can see why the aggressive Calvin Burgess occasionally may not hide a disdainful sneer at 'these useless people who make noise in offices!'

Having worked in Rwanda, I just can't imagine what would happen to Selelah Okoth if Kagame were to hear there is no laboratory report on pollution of a contested area! In Kenya, in Siaya, this kind of insane incompetence does not strike any politician as a symptom of a dying society. –--You vanish 100 thousand dollars then your environmental attache has no bodaboda fare to the site, nor hand-gloves and mkebe to chota muddy water! Let alone laboratory-proofed equipment! It is Calvin versus the Vermin.

I know exactly what I am dealing with in my backyard Nyanza. VERMIN, which is the characterisation I used in this thread.

jukwaa.proboards.com/thread/9281/vermin-elite-retarded-counties-nyanza

END OF FOOTNOTE ONE.

[jakaswanga]

Meanwhile in the kernel

Siaya county Assembly members demand expulsion of Dominion from Yala Swamp

Posted on 10:48 am, February 16, 2017 by KNA

The Siaya County Assembly members on Wednesday vowed to kick out an American investor from the Yala Swamp for allegedly belittling the community through peddling falsehoods against the local leadership.

Speaking at the Siaya county assembly during a motion to discuss recent allegations by the Dominion Farms limited, Chief Executive, Mr. Calvin Burgess that former Prime Minister, Raila Odinga and a host of local ODM politicians intimidated him through threats of closure and cash demands, the MCAs said time was ripe for the American to pack and leave as his presence in the area has done more harm than good.

Speaker after speaker expressed his anger against Mr. Burgess for linking the former prime minister with the failure of his business venture, saying that if anything, he should thank Raila for convincing the local community to accommodate him.

The MCAs said that the community around the Yala swamp has suffered for more than a decade as they could no longer access water and even a public road that the firm blocked.

They said that Mr. Burgess had reneged on a memorandum of understanding he signed with the defunct Bondo and Siaya county councils, the precursor to the current Siaya county government in which he was to undertake several community projects, among them roads, hospitals and water projects in return for using the natural resource.

“We are dealing with an international conman who is unable to pay his workers and meet several obligations to the community and his suppliers. We need a clear road map on how and when he will leave,” said an MCA, Mr. Nicholas Aneme.

The deputy speaker who is also the West Ugenya MCA, Mr. Stephen Kadera said the MoU between the Dominion farms and the defunct local authorities should be declared null and void as they were fraudulently signed.

Mr. Kadera said Mr. Burgess should also be declared a persona non grata in Siaya county and the process of his deportation back to the United States of America commenced immediately.

The MCAs who included, Joseph Kawuor, Omollo Kowi, George Ndonji, Rosemary Ogutu, Jared Abayo and Leonard Oriaro lamented that since the entry of the investor into the area, they have been forced to spend a fortune in bailing out members of the community who are persistently arrested over trivial matters such as trespass.

They accused the investor of stooping too low by accepting to be used by Jubilee party to fight Raila Odinga.

Last week, Mr. Burgess addressed the media in Nairobi where he claimed that Raila had asked for financial support for his political campaigns.

Mr. Burgess further claimed that Raila’s sister, Ruth Odinga who is the Kisumu deputy governor forced Dominion to award her dealership and took rice that she has refused to pay for five years down the line.

In his ruling, the speaker of the Siaya county assembly, Mr. George Okode tasked the implementation committee to take up the matter and report back to the assembly within 14 days on the status of implementation of a report by the Agriculture, fisheries and tourism committee.

The committee, chaired by Jared Abayo had recommended a re- survey of the entire swamp and review of the 25 year lease agreement with the Dominion farms limited.

Mr. Okode further ordered that the report be sent to the relevant committees of both the senate and national assemblies, the United States government and the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) through its embassy, the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Ethics and Anti- Corruption Commission (EACC) to enable the offices conduct investigations into alleged malpractices by Mr. Burgess.

The speaker also ordered that the report and records of today’s proceedings also be sent to organisations that were adversely mentioned by Mr. Burgess in his press statement and be circulated widely to the public.

By Philip Onyango

Rule 1. Make open the details of the original MOU! then we will know what it will cost us to buy back or erase our Laibon Lenana thumbrint on the document! remember how both Kenya and Zimbabwe took heavy loans to compensate white settlers who had, originally, gotten the land free from the queen!? Those white settlers, colonists, were being bought out so that locals, original owners of the land, could be resettled. But capitalist rules said the whiteman had astronomically ADDED VALUE TO THE LAND. And that astronomical value, the native would pay to the point of bankrupting his newly independent nation!

And nice touch, the new elite rather that the landless got the land! and so half a century after independence LAND REFORM is still a recurring emotive theme!

NB: Mozambicans have just woken up to a secret clause on the $4bn secret loan negotatiated by securocrats. By default at first scheduled refund instalment, future gas revenues will first be banked by the creditors abroad! End of sovereingty over own natural resources, signed away by some 4-connected military and civilian men! Some deals are that sweet in Africa!

Unbelievable but true! So, Siaya, open that MOU lying sealed in Nairobi! Know your surprises! We don't want FBI advising the US government to help freeze Kenyan accounts in US banks, because an American investor has been robbed and deported from Obama's home!

[wanyee]

Yala Shows Raila Lacks Vision
jukwaa.proboards.com/thread/472/yala-shows-raila-lacks-vision

Not that Jubilee is any better...

[wanyee]

Jakaswanga,

You have definitely hit the nail on the head!

"Capitalism respects private property yes, but with no 'title-deed' to 'communal land', added to the hubris of the mythical superiority of race, the issue of ownership in the way as understood by capitalism in private property did not arise in the colonial mind."

On that note, please see the following letter, sent to the Senate of the Republic of Kenya (C/o the late Senator of Kwale County, Boy Juma Boy) - regarding Base Titanium's controversial titanium mining project in Kwale County - which specifically stipulates the laws of Kenya, with respect to "communal land rights."

SOURCE: www.madaraka.net/?page_id=1644

[jakaswanga]

Feb 24, 2017 23:40:29 GMT 3 wanyee said:

Jakaswanga,

You have definitely hit the nail on the head!

"Capitalism respects private property yes, but with no 'title-deed' to 'communal land', added to the hubris of the mythical superiority of race, the issue of ownership in the way as understood by capitalism in private property did not arise in the colonial mind."

On that note, please see the following letter, sent to the Senate of the Republic of Kenya (C/o the late Senator of Kwale County, Boy Juma Boy) - regarding Base Titanium's controversial titanium mining project in Kwale County - which specifically stipulates the laws of Kenya, with respect to "communal land rights."

SOURCE: www.madaraka.net/?page_id=1644

Wanyee, thanx. I now read the piece.

I didn't know this deep aspect of historical injustice in Kwale. I think the debate breaking out is the model of business friendliness we have adopted in Kenya. It is a type which can only heap injustice upon injustice, especially on rural, relatively powerless communities, and worse, when the stake are so high as in Turkana oil and Kwale Titanium.

[jakaswanga]

NOW SIAYA, THUM OCHOMO SIAYA KABABA!



We have seen the tribulations of the sugar industry in Nyanza and Western. jukwaa.proboards.com/thread/8971/end-sugarcane-industry-nyanza-western Yesterday, or thereabouts, our Excellency Ouru, seeking to insure his re-election, dished some ksh.4b to Mumias sugar. It is an industry in a crisis.

As we wrestle with the near collapse of the sugarcane industry in the traditional belt, I read heard of the ODM minivermin who rule Siaya state, that Dominion is FAILED and gone BUST and is now but a CON company! I waited a bit for some clarification, because there is a terrible detail to square off.

We know COMESA and EPA prices of imported sugar. We know the prices of Ugandan and Brazilian confectionery sugar imported via Kismayu, courtesy of the cousins of Aden Duale in concert with the contraband companies under the umbrella of the multinational KDF. The dear lootenants do charcoal on the sidelines of course, but forests easily deplete you know. Angry Somali nationalism alleges the Kenyans have branched out into the PIMPING business. But that is another story.

We know the true retail price of crystal should hover at about ksh.45/kg at your economy supermarket. That you pay these prices

The price of sugar has risen to a new peak buoyed by heightened activity from industry cartels out to mint cash ahead of next year’s general election. A survey of retail outlets throughout the country indicates that sugar is now priced at an average of Sh145 per kilo despite the recent surge in imports to cover up for the shortfall resulting from decline in local output.
By GERALD ANDAE, [e-mail]

is the same reason we buy cars at ksh. 1M which cost ksh.300,000 where they were made. –-Eh! The Market is not always perfect for the consumer! all those heavy layers of levies! they break your back and make you weak in the knees for smugglers and contraband markets!

So, with all that open markets and the world market (subsidised) sugar glut, and Mumias and Sony and the rest barely solvent, good old Calvin Burgess is building a new SUGARMILL at Yala swamp? He is actually expanding where others are collapsing! –--eh!?

Then he must be a fool, a con or, yes, definitely made of something we do not have around. He reckons he can go scales which beat EPA, Brazil, Uganda, COMESA rock-bottom rates. He must reckon he can do ksh.40/kg! And have you buy it at a respectable ksh.80/kg at your local economy kiosk!

He says, with this illegal, arrogant new mill of his, he is not those c-untless goats you have had at Muhoroni, Miwani, Mumias, Nzoia, Sony and Chemelil. He informs, with hidden boast, he is not your lazy LAKE BASIN SH!T HEADS; he is not your big men who only leave carcasses of industries behind, as they fly off in golden parachutes, what a coincidence. Where they should have consolidated into one monster company, merged into a single mother holding, in an ever more concentration of capital and streamlining of the business sector, they differentiated into ever small plots, economically irrelevant and doomed to be looted by local bandits moving on to political office! And then the redundant relationships with the cane outgrowers!

Is Calvin's sugarmill a con!? as is the current position of the Siaya ODM vermin mouth pieces? Or is Calvin's model of vertical integration (like Oil companies do) a go-getting winner? His cane racket like his rice scheme will be mechanised.

ENTER GODOVARI

Neither do these tales of woe on account of Brazil, COMESA and EPA subsidised prices seem to scare the new suitor reported to court the Swampy girl, Yala. His name is Indian Godovari. He is rearing to rear Sugarcane at the Dominion spot too! ready to build sugarmills too! This kind of entrepreneural confidence from afar should mean those tales of woe told by Mumias and its ilk are fables to mask local managerial sabotage. There is lots of room to make profit, growing own sugar in Kenya! Otherwise why should Godovari be talking sweet? ---( because kenyans are ever begging to be conned 24/7!)

Somewhere therefore, something aint right, someone is lying big. Perhaps Burgess is a super predator but not a conman. He gets work done. His rice scheme has in any case outstripped the stagnant Ahero. He is an exploitative former Oklahoma prison builder yes, but his DOMINION in Yala is not a failed business. It is a controversial project, making big bucks, but like everything else in Kenya, not for the common man. That is the Achilles heel.

Locals see only their land gone, producing mammoth foods which they can't buy at the local economy kiosk! This alienation forges into historical injustice.

OPTION CAPITALIST INDUSTRIALISATION UNDER THE BANDIT BOURGEOISIE

This is the issue we never discuss. We are industrialising on a capitalist path late in the day. We gotta know the score. More so, under the captaincy of a lootocracy. This lumpem bourgeoisie, or the so-called state bandits, or tropical gangsters alwasy obsess with raw deals for the public in exchange for self aggrandisement. There are precedents. Nothing nice about the process, even for the proletariat, let alone the peasants which, in modernist capitalist political economy, must disappear one way or another.

Siaya should be happy Calvin is using dubious pesticides rather than genocide to clear the plot, nor is he building concentration camps as reserves to herd the natives into! A lot of African regimes are happy to have their own soldiers clear the land of 'squatters' and herd the remnants into starvation reserves so that 'foreign investment' can pick up!

You know what Kagame did with the Twa in Rwanda and Kabila with the Pygmies of Congo? And Gaberone the Hottentots of the Kalahari where Botswana diamond mines are to expand?

Africa is rising, on a foundation of skeletons. Prepare for the haunted house!
FOOTNOTE:
There is this thing called KNC. Take a closer look, Siaya. Do the deep think, guinea pig!

Next time he visits Kenya, Obama could pay Calvin Burgess a visit. Swamp residents have help from groups like Action Aid International (based in Britain) and the Boulder, Colorado-based Global Response organization. But they are up against some powerful players. Dominion Farms is part of the multinational Kenya National Council, launched by the World Economic Forum last year. Council members include Unilever, Coca Cola, Monsanto, the Kenyan phone company Safaricom and the National Oil Corporation of Kenya.

“It’s forty-four years since Kenyans won independence. Now they’re fighting for self determination again,” said Paula Palmer of Global Response. A helping hand from Siaya’s most famous child could make all the difference.

Siaya, you catch!

Thum ochomo Siaya korg'Orengo!

[jakaswanga]

some historical material: THE END GAME




PRELUDE

Rumours, truths and lies on Dominion Farm

Sunday February 26 2017

Mr Calvin Burgess, CEO Dominion Farms


Dominion Farms Ltd CEO Calvin Burgess addressing the news media at Six Eighty Hotel in Nairobi on February 8, 2017. He claimed that Raila Odinga and other politicians are frustrating his business.
In Summary

Burgess was in the news after he claimed that opposition leader Raila Odinga, his family members and political associates had been trying to extort money from him.
Burgess also claimed that Odinga’s sister, Kisumu deputy governor Ruth Odinga, had taken rice from the factory and refused to pay for it.
Burgess arrived in Kenya in September 2002 at the height of the Moi succession campaigns that had seen the emergence of Uhuru Kenyatta as the Kanu candidate.
The stoppage of the Dominion project sparked protests in Kisumu, Bondo and Siaya and the demonstrators accused the Mwai Kibaki government of attempting to sideline the Luo by frustrating foreign investors.


By JOHN KAMAU; More by this Author

Some time in 2011, a Nigerian Minister for Agriculture – on the request on former President Olusegun Obasanjo – flew to Kenya and went to Yala swamp to see what American investor Calvin Burgess was doing there. Obasanjo had been to Yala before on the invitation of Raila Odinga, who is a family friend. Soon after, the minister invited Mr Burgess to Lagos in a trip that he would later describe as a “great fanfare of private planes, helicopters, and fancy hotels”.

“We were promised the world, if only we would come to Nigeria to build another Dominion Farm,” he would later say of the 30,000 hectares of land that was on offer.
Mr Obasanjo had wanted to woo Mr Burgess to start massive rice cultivation in Taraba State and in Nigerian newspapers, he described him as a “friend of Nigeria.”

It is a story that can help us unravel the mystery of the Canadian-born Oklahoma man behind the expansive Dominion farms straddling Bondo and Siaya – and how well connected he is (or was). We will come to that in a short while; but first, the allegations.

Burgess was in the news this month after he claimed that opposition leader Raila Odinga, his family members and political associates had been trying to extort money from him – and have been frustrating his business after he refused to give in to demands that he bankroll’s Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party.

Interestingly, Raila has refused to be drawn to that debate and has left his political handlers to deny the allegations and threaten Burgess with a libel suit.

Burgess also claimed that Odinga’s sister, Kisumu deputy governor Ruth Odinga, had taken rice from the factory and refused to pay for it and that this has now caused bad blood between the Dominion Farm administration and the locals.
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It is not clear where the fallout with the Odinga family came from since when the project was starting, Raila’s eldest brother, Oburu Odinga, took it upon himself to lobby the government to approve the controversial project.

But who is this man?

Burgess arrived in Kenya in September 2002 at the height of the Moi succession campaigns that had seen the emergence of Uhuru Kenyatta as the Kanu candidate and the formation of the Rainbow Alliance that was opposed to Moi’s candidate. By his side was a local clergyman, Rev Ken Nyagudi, who was vying for the Kisumu Town West seat (which he won) – and is currently the ODM director of E-fundraising and resource mobilisation.

Rev Nyagudi introduced Burgess to local churches, politicos and elders. He organised church crusades where Burgess was the preacher and he would even attend local funerals and hold development seminars with the elders.

POSITION OF KINGMAKER

By then, Raila was the key player in the Rainbow Alliance, composed of Kanu stalwarts who included George Saitoti, JJ Kamotho, Moody Awori and Kalonzo Musyoka. The group later merged with Mwai Kibaki’s National Alliance of Kenya (NAK) to form National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) that trounced Uhuru Kenyatta at the ballot box, thus elevating Raila to the lofty position of a kingmaker.

It was during this period, September 20, 2002, that Burgess visited the Lake Basin Development Authority (LBDA) which was in charge of the Yala swamp, and took a quick look at the trust land then under the Siaya and Bondo county councils.

He was seeking an opportunity to invest there – by building Africa’s largest rice farm and perhaps fulfil the reclamation opportunities that had been identified here in 1954 when Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners made the first proposal on profitable utilisation of Yala swamp.

Mr Peter Owino, a worker at the Dominion farm in Siaya feeds fingerlings at a fish pond within the extensive farm. The farm rears fish for sale. PHOTO/HEZRON NJOROGE
Mr Peter Owino, a worker at the Dominion farm in Siaya feeds fingerlings at a fish pond within the extensive farm. The farm rears fish for sale. PHOTO/HEZRON NJOROGE

Yala was a desolate tsetse fly-infested place – a showcase of how not to run an irrigation project. Of the 17,000 hectares, the struggling LBDA had only managed to reclaim 2,300 hectares and constructed some d**es and canals. After years of wastage and wanton theft, LBDA had sunk hundreds of millions of shillings into that swamp and there was nothing to show for it.

For many years, Yala was like a condemned yard of abandoned government houses, collapsed d**es and rusty machinery. The only visible development was a d**e that had been built between 1965 and 1970 and that had led to the successful channelling of the Yala River and its separation from Lake Kanyaboli.

Even though various studies – first by a Dutch firm Illaco and later by the Japanese – had been carried out on Yala swamp’s potential, no international investor was willing to put his faith and money in that swamp.

PROCESSING PADDY RICE

That is the place that Mr Burgess walked into, as the first foreign investor. Following a second meeting, held at the offices of Kaplan and Stratton advocates, it had been agreed that LBDA would be a shareholder of the Dominion project by contributing land, heavy equipment and rice mills for processing paddy rice.

Mr Burgess was not an ordinary soul. He was a Canadian-born American millionaire; the founder of Oklahoma-based Dominion Group of Companies whose core business was to build private prisons and lease them to the government.

Back home, he owned several prison properties and federal buildings in the states of Texas, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma. Besides construction and leasing, he also ventured into large-scale farming, and aircraft maintenance and leasing, minting millions of dollars every year in profit.

A man who presents himself as religious and owns a church, Mr Burgess always says that he came to Kenya following a touching testimony about the poverty in Yala made in his Oklahoma church by a woman who had lived there for many years.

“God has plans for people’s lives,” Burgess was once quoted as saying about his decision to come to Kenya, “and I thought that maybe this was part of His plan for me.”
But he didn’t know that he was walking into a dreary environmental trap pit – where politics, corruption and activism thrive as cosy bedfellows.

Burgess knew how to survive in African politics. As a rich Christian, he could easily mingle with the locals thanks to Rev Nyagudi’s friendship and support – and dine with the mighty too.

Located at the end of Yala River in the south and the Hwiro and Nzoia rivers in the north, Mr Burgess’s Dominion project was initially to run for 25 years before it was handed back to the parastatal. In between, and nobody seems to know how, this lease was extended to 45 years, plus some additional hectares.

PAY SH15 MILLION

An MoU was also signed between the Siaya and Bondo councils – but not Busia, where the farms extend to. Burgess was to pay Sh15 million to a council account – which he claims in a published interview that he did – before it was emptied and closed after the payments. As compensation, the MoU had asked Dominion to rehabilitate 150 acres as community land but he was forced to give more than that.

Starting this project was an investment nightmare since environmentalists regard this swamp as home to the endangered Sitatunga antelope. They made a lot of noise – on that account alone – but Burgess was unmoved.

While he was patient to see his Yala project thrive, he was impatient with the government bureaucracy and that is how Oburu Odinga sought to push for the approval of the project by taking on the government on the floor of the House. And he did this with the support of other Nyanza MPs.

This was at a time when the Ministry of Water Resources – under Martha Karua – and Natural Resources – under Newton Kulundu and Prof Wangari Maathai – had stopped the project and asked Dominion to hand back all the government equipment and houses.

The stoppage of the Dominion project sparked protests in Kisumu, Bondo and Siaya and the demonstrators accused the Mwai Kibaki government of attempting to sideline the Luo by frustrating foreign investors. It was the ministry of Planning and National Development, then under Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o, that gave Dominion the go-ahead.

Because of the bad blood between various arms of government, due to the collapsed Narc MoU, Dominion managed to survive and take off minus lots of scrutiny.

Its problems started when local activists emerged demanding that Dominion should compensate 150 locals who owned the land before it was taken over by LBDA. Again, local MPs shielded Dominion from paying: “It was not the responsibility of the investor to pay those people but, rather that of the government,” said Nyakach MP Peter Odoyo during the 2006 discussion about the Yala Swamp and place of Dominion.

At that time Dominion had started to encroach on people’s property and international activists saw Calvin Burgess as a good example of land grabs in Africa. But Burgess had the local political backing and always denied that allegation. “This was not land, it wasn’t gazetted, it didn’t exist, this was a swamp,” he once told NTV. In another interview with environmental author Fred Pearce, he said: “Whatever the locals say, they didn’t use the swamp. They couldn’t get in. Now they want to go there of course because we are drying it out. But they didn’t before.”

Another issue that was never addressed – thanks to local politics – was that Dominion Farms had, after signing the MoU, taken over Yala swamp with minimal consultation with the LBDA management. It had also failed to provide a project proposal and had not paid for land rates among other issues, according to then assistant minister for Regional Development, Danson Mungatana.

As the draining of the Yala swamp started, Burgess flew from his Oklahoma base to supervise the works. In between, lobby groups and environmental activists raised concerns about the environmental destruction of Yala swamp. Letters started flying to both the Kenyan authorities and UNEP – but Mr Burgess had the backing of the most powerful family – the Odingas.

IRRIGATE RICE FIELDS

Before long, Dominion Farms occupied some 40 per cent of the Yala Swamp, but the dam that the company built to irrigate its rice fields had flooded a much larger area and made it practically impossible for the local communities to raise livestock.

They also claimed that Burgess’ project was destroying their access to water, and that the regular aerial spraying of fertilisers and agrochemicals made them and their animals sick.

In 2006, Peter Oloo Aringo went to Parliament and lobbied for the establishment of a technical committee on Yala Swamp whose objective was to recommend the expansion of the Dominion project towards Busia. Parliament was told that Burgess had invested Sh2.3 billion and had brought equipment worth Sh400 million. But there was one problem – this equipment had been detained at the Mombasa port by the taxman.

It was during this period that Burgess found his way to State House, Nairobi, where he met with President Kibaki and that is how Dominion got another lease of life. Kibaki would follow up and inaugurate the Dominion rice mills a year later.

To his credit, Mr Burgess rehabilitated the Yala swamp into a formidable showcase. It stands out as one of the best run irrigation schemes in Eastern Africa employing hundreds of people. What he forgot was that powerplay, politics and business are sisters.

It was the success of this venture that saw Nigeria’s Obasanjo invite him to Nigeria which was looking for a rice investor to feed its growing population.

Like in Kenya, Burgess went and met the local community, the State government and the Upper Benue River Authority. He also visited churches and mosques to sell his vision before meeting the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Water, the ports and customs offices and the US Embassy officials

On February 17, 2012 at the Abuja Hilton Hotel, Burgess signed an MoU with the State of Taraba and the Government of Nigeria and they agreed to fly 50 Nigerians to Yala for six months of training.

PROMISED FINANCING

Then he found hiccups: “The promised financing from both the State of Taraba and the Government of Nigeria was all talk but no money. Help from the President came in the form of a waiver for all duty on agricultural equipment for everyone … not just us. Treasury and Customs quickly hid the waiver in their “Secret Files”.

We fought for a year to get the promised exemptions and only after tape recording the direct demands for bribes from high officials in the Treasury did we even find out about the “Secret Files”. The Treasury attempted direct extortion from our manager and he recorded it and gave the copy to the highest law enforcement agency in the land but the culprits scoffed at us with impunity ...”

In between, he was accused of attempting to grab land and displace thousands of locals. As his equipment arrived at the Nigeria ports, Burgess refused to pay bribes.

“The clearing agents added “extras” to our billings and when we demanded to know what these were, there was no response,” he later said. “We would not be part of their corruption … I have been extorted, arrested, detained, lied to …

Finally, he threw in the towel in West Africa. Whether he survives at the Yala Swamp where it all began remains to be seen. But the story of Dominion Farm has hardly been told. The story of Burgess is only beginning to unfold.

[e-mail] @johnkamau1

[jakaswanga]

Giant marsh farm that has Dominion over us

Wednesday June 8 2011

PHOTO/HEZRON NJOROGE/NATION A fisherman with his catch at Usenge beach in Siaya county. With fishermen complaining of dwindling yields, Dominion Farms is set to change their fortunes by encouraging fish farming.

PHOTO/HEZRON NJOROGE/NATION A fisherman with his catch at Usenge beach in Siaya county. With fishermen complaining of dwindling yields, Dominion Farms is set to change their fortunes by encouraging fish farming.
By EMMAN OMARI

In the magical year 2030, Dominion in Siaya County will become an Agri City.

It will become the Punjab of Kenya as the net producer of rice and the city where everything will be found — farm produce, factories, hotels, a popular tourists’ destination plus every service you can imagine.

Rice, fish, bananas and sorghum are just a few of the crops to be found on the multi-billion shilling Dominion Farms land in the sprawling swamp on the Yala river, west of the county near where it pours into Lake Victoria.

And to the north is the upcoming irrigation canal on the Nzoia river that is set to turn more than 10,000 acres into an agri-business hub.

Conventional fishing on the many beaches of the lake will continue to generate income for the people and the county.

Yala swamp is a muddy black soil marshland turned into black gold whose impact is being felt in the whole of Kenya.
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Its rice, sold under the brand name of Prime Harvest, is in every supermarket; its fingerlings are being sold to fish farmers throughout the country and Kisumu Molasses gets its sorghum from there.

The Sh2.5 billion project, the work of Mr Calvin Burgess, the CEO from Oklahoma, US has turned wasteland into productive land that is feeding the country.

Sarah Achieng, aged 34, employed as a fish pond attendant, did not go far in school before she was married and began to have her five children.

“I get everything from Dominion, money to educate my children and help my relatives too,” she said.

Mr Philip Abir, a company director said: “Our objective is to become the biggest rice producer in Africa as we continue to reclaim the swamp.”

There is 3,500 acres under rice —harvested twice a year, effectively giving them 7,000 acres of the crop — plus 20 acres given to sorghum. That is out of 17,000 acres given to Dominion to farm.

When reclamation of the swamp is completed in the next 18 years, it will be a giant farmland agro-city comparable in size to Tharaka-Nithi County or the whole of Mombasa.

Dominion has been given a 25-year lease, of which seven years has already been taken.

“We are negotiating for more and hope that whatever good we are doing will be our strength to enable us get the extension,” Mr Abir said.

The company has also dug canals to take water to 200 acres given to Siaya residents and a further 45 acres for Bondo as part of the company’s community development programme.

“They can also plant their rice or other crops for their livelihood,” Mr Abir said. There are seven big fish ponds already and a total of 32 planned.

Last year, said Mr Abir, Dominion produced rice worth Sh337 million, more than a year’s budget of some of the smaller ministries.

Dominion has a milling plant with a capacity of 78 million kilos of rice a year.

Plant manager David Waweru said the entire country mills 45 million kilos a year, meaning that Dominion alone can mill rice for all the producers in Kenya.

The ponds produce 2.5 million fingerlings which supplement the Government’s efforts to promote fish farming.

According to Mr Abir, such numbers can replenish the fish stocks in lake Victoria.

And Mr Enos Were, the Aqua-Culture manager said: “Our fish with a small head has less bone and more meat and in 10 years we want to be the biggest producers of fish in the world.”

Fish is harvested from the ponds and sold both locally and as far as Kisumu and Nairobi. Sorghum for Kisumu Molasses is used in making alcohol.

Ms Ruth Adhiambo Odinga, director of Spectre International which runs Kisumu Molasses, explained the pilot sorghum project at Dominion is to produce seeds which will go to out growers who will in turn sell back to them.

“We want to change the lives of the people in the entire region by making them part of the firm by earning a living from it,” she said.

The sorghum stems will be used to make alcohol while other farmers will grow the crop for seeds and for food. Apart from well maintained roads, the farm has a 500-metre airstrip which is to be extended for bigger planes.

And Dominion is all the time rolling out new projects to help the community.

Hydro-power production is about to start from a waterfall 1,153 metres above sea level, built on a canal on the Yala river. It will light Dominion and sell the rest to the national grid.

A pressing machine is being installed to make diesel oil from the jatropha plant also grown on the farm. And the massive production of soya beans is in the offing.

The beans will be grown on 7,000 acres of the swamp for making fish feed both for the farm and to be sold on commercially.

Mr Abir said that will offset the monthly cost of Sh2 million for importing the feed from Uganda.

Already, a fish feed milling plant has been installed with a capacity to produce 30,000

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Image Gallery
IN PICTURES: Siaya County
15/6/2011

A fisherman arrives with his catch at the Usenge beach in Siaya county. PHOTO/HEZRON NJOROGE
8/6/2011
How Obama magic has changed life in sleepy Kogelo

That Nyangoma Kogelo, the home village of US President Barack Obama’s father, is one of the biggest beneficiaries

That was then

Now

Job fears as Dominion firm stops operations in Kenya

By Olivia Odhiambo | Published Sun, November 12th 2017

A farmer scares away wild birds at Dominion rice farm in Siaya County.(Photo: Collins Oduor/Standard)

IN SUMMARY Firm has written letters to 350 employees warning them of plans to close down the business The workers had reported to duty as usual on Friday morning only to receive letters on the termination of their contracts American company — Dominion Group — could be preparing to leave Kenya after 15 years of running a multi-billion farming project at Yala in Siaya County. Group’s Chief Executive Officer Calvin Burges has written letters to employees telling them of plans to close down the business.

ALSO READ: There will be no elections in Siaya, says county official


On Saturday, the company’s 350 workers from Siaya County were staring at redundancies following reports that Mr Burges said he was closing down from November 11. In termination letters to the employees seen by Sunday Standard, Mr Burges said the company was suspending its operations due to a difficult business environment. In the letter the company’s CEO thanks employees for their dedicated service to the company. “This is to notify you that Dominion Farms Ltd, will suspend its operations with immediate effect from 10 November 2017,” read the termination letters. It added: “This is because of the hard time the company has passed through and the difficult business environment existing in the country. We hope that the company will stabilise and reopen soon.” The workers had reported to duty as usual on Friday morning only to receive letters on the termination of their contracts. This move has however left the workers in panic claiming that the company owes them accrued salary arrears of Sh350 million. “We are yet to receive an official communication from the company on how we will be paid our salary arrears. We demand immediate payment of our salaries,” said Fred Akula, a supervisor.

ALSO READ: Goons invade assembly after MCAs reject county executive nominees Social ammenities

Efforts to reach the Director of the Dominion Farms Company Chris Abir for comment, proved futile. Yesterday, Akula said the labour relation law was very clear on the terms of terminating an employee’s contract. “As far as we are concerned the company can make this move upon clearing all its accrued benefits to employees. We will camp at the company’s premises from Monday next week until all our dues are settled,” said the supervisor. Mr Akula said they had information suggesting that Dominion Company was closing shop to pave way for another company.

Read more at: www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001259947/job-fears-as-dominion-firm-stops-operations-in-kenya

The Dominion Farms employees are now appealing for the intervention of the county government and local leaders. The firm, based in Siaya specialises in producing long grain rice, fish, and other agricultural products.

ALSO READ: Members of public hold Siaya County Assembly hostage

[wanyee]

Ten years ago... jukwaa.proboards.com/thread/472/yala-shows-raila-lacks-vision