A cigarette manufacturer will pay secondary school fees for the bright children of tobacco farmers.
Kenya: Tobacco Firm to Offer Bursaries - The Nation (Nairobi)
January 30, 2007
Elisha Otieno
Nairobi
A cigarette manufacturer will pay secondary school fees for the bright children of tobacco farmers.
To benefit from Alliance One Tobacco company will sons and daughters of their best growers in Nyanza, Eastern and Rift Valley provinces.
However, only Form One students will benefit from the annual bursary scheme.
"We want to play a role in advocating and promoting quality education among our farmers," said managing director Graham Kayes in a speech read for him by the leaf director, Mr Patrick Kimani, in Mabera, Kuria District.
This year, the company will spend Sh500,000 on fees for 21 students - 11 of them girls - who have been admitted to various schools in the country.
The programme will not necessarily target poor students but those who are bright and whose parents are among the best performing.
Alliance One is a tobacco merchant exporting leaf to various parts of the world.
Kuria district commissioner Joshua Chepchieng challenged other tobacco companies to include the education of their farmers' children in their corporate social responsibility programmes.
He said the firms bagged hundreds of millions of shillings annually in profits yet they ploughed back very little to the areas where tobacco is grown.
"They must support rehabilitation of roads, building of hospitals and schools within the tobacco growing areas, otherwise it will be needless to engage in the difficult task of growing tobacco," he said.
Living standards
Mr Chepchieng asked farmers to plan for their goals to improve their living standards.
"Farmers in Migori and Kuria districts earn over Sh800 million annually from the crop but they still live in abject poverty. They continue to live in ramshackles as their children drop out of schools due to lack of fees," Mr Chepchieng observed. He asked the firms to teach growers saving skills and help them stop living "from hand to mouth".
Mr Kimani said farmers allied to his company would be paid through banks because their employees were losing money to gunmen.
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