Mwangangi Mutuku @PeopleDailyKe
Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (Kalro) faces collapse unless the government urgently addresses cash constraints throttling the country’s research hub. Among the many challenges facing the organisation, which also needs clear policy guidelines, is high employees turnover which is draining it of its top brains that it has invested in over the years.
The organisation’s deputy director general in charge of crops Dr Felister Makini says most of the staff were moving to greener pastures in universities and international research centres. “A number of our scientists are leaving and it is impacting negatively on our duty.
It is sad to see Kalro incapacitated due to insufficient funding yet we have the best brains,”she said. Makini says staff are demoralised because their salaries have not been harmonised, pointing out that people in the same job cadre were receiving a different pay scale. “It is a setback as a new organisation because we had a road map in transition two years ago, we need proper government support otherwise we stop doing research,” she said.
The director said a recent government move to remove levies on some cash crops like tea and coffee will result in lack of revenue which was previously used to fund research. “When there are no levies and we are not allocated money from the national budget, you can imagine what will happen to those three commodities,” she said.
She added that Members of Parliament through a natural resources bill sought to confine movement of scientific material a matter that scientists say would stifle research. Speaking yesterday at Kalro Kiboko Station in Makueni, Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) country coordinator, Murega Mwimali said the many regulations lawmakers are tailoring would curtail research.
In the new law, the authority to conduct field trials and movement of genetically modified organisms is vested on Parliament as it is in the natural resources draft bill already in the Senate.
The National Biosafety authority has been regulating research on genetic modification and material transfer but with the new law, the Parliament will have a direct control to field trials which seems to be a ramification hence setback to the scientists. “What message is the government passing to the research community?
We will have a delay in implementation of research by conflicting laws and secondly we will be bringing forth many layers of bureaucracy that will delay on delivery of products to the farmers. He called on the members of the agriculture committee in both National Assembly and the Senate to re-look the matter for the interest of the delivery to farmers.
“Let the clauses touching on material transfer agreement and confine field trials approved by parliament be expunged. Parliament can do a better job by expunging the clauses because we have already institutions managing that,” he said. The researcher say exchange of materials has been ongoing not only between scientists but also within farmers over the years.
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