Farmers threaten to leave

2005-04-04 18:58

Naivasha, Kenya - International flower farmers threatened to leave Kenya on Monday, hours after another armed attack on a European manager carrying cash to pay plantation workers, a businessman said.

Naivasha is the centre of Kenya's multimillion dollar flower export industry and was an important farming region for European settlers during the colonial period. The region also has a growing tourism industry, which has suffered because of a recent crime wave.

Investors and managers of businesses involved in international trade from the area met on Monday with police and local officials after a gunman fired into a vehicle carrying one of their colleagues. One suspected robber was killed and two police officers wounded in the foiled attack, police said.

The farmers, mostly from Europe, where almost all of the flowers are sold, threatened to shut down their plantations, which employ more than 20 000 people around Naivasha, 80km northwest of Nairobi, said Mark Kariuki, a leading hotelier in the area.

Hired killers

The farmers said they would consider moving to neighbouring Ethiopia if the attacks focusing on white farm managers did not end, he said.

The businessmen agreed at the meeting to hire a private security consultant to work with police to reduce the attacks, which have left two European farmers dead since August, Kariuki said.

Naivasha police chief Simon Kiragu said that he had agreed to work with the flower farmers.

"This is community policing, which we have been advocating for in a bid to fight the menace," Kiragu said. But he said he was not convinced the farmers were being targeted any more than anyone else in the area.

Police arrested Ann Wambui Ribiru, 38, in connection with two robberies, that of Dutch farmer Lloyd Schraven and British farmer John Christian Martin Palmer. She allegedly gathered information about the farmers and then sent armed men to rob and kill them, police said.

- AP