The parliamentary committee on Trade and Industry is probing how 139 containers of unfit cooking oil disappeared from a private Container Freight Station (CFS).
This is after it emerged that 88 out of 139 containers had been released to the Kenyan market.
Speaking after an inspection tour at Mombasa CFS, committee chair Mandera South MP Adan Haji Ali called upon the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) to immediately launch investigations into the matter.
Adan has also called for the revocation of the CFS’s operating license, as the loss amounted to gross negligence.
“We ask the authorities revoke the license and the degazettement of the authorization to operate as a CFS for this particular facility,” said Adan.
Dagoretti South MP, John Kiarie questioned how flagged containers would disappear from a bonded warehouse.
He confirmed that during the first launch of an investigation by the committee there were 139 containers of the condemned edible oil.
“Today as we were doing investigations through random sampling we have established that out of 139 containers, 88 had been allegedly released to the market to be reused in the manufacture of soap and the remaining have suspicious custody on how they left the CFS,” said Kiarie.
Kiarie said the committee is seeking to establish the chain of custody from where the goods were loaded, whether there was a standard check during the loading, how they were offloaded to the alleged CFS.
“If this foodstuff has left a bonded warehouse, where did it end up? Chances are it ended up in your table and you are consuming poison,” said Kiarie.
Further, the legislature said they need clarifications from the Multi-Agency team who were involved in overseeing the exercise of the condemned edible oil.
Earlier before coming for physical verification, the Committee sought answers from the Ministry and the Multi-Agency taskforce on the rationale behind the decision to seize goods belonging to a number of traders, the ownership of the seized goods, location of storage and quantities of the seized goods, among other questions.
The 139 containers of cooking edible oil were intercepted in 2019 after Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) and other government agencies raised a red flag on the basis that the consignment was not fit for human consumption.