KAYANZA, January 3rd (ABP) – Tea growers in the communes of Muruta and Kabarore, in the northern province of Kayanza, are delighted that they have begun to receive the premium owed to them by the Burundi Tea Office (OTB), which is giving them more courage to maintain the crop, a check by ABP has revealed during field trips he carried out on Monday and Tuesday December 31, 2024.
During a visit to the Nyamisagara village in the Kabarore commune on December 26 by the Minister of the Environment, Agriculture and Livestock, Prosper Dodiko, to listen to the concerns of tea growers, the latter had raised the issue of unpaid premiums. He promised that those premiums would be paid before the end of December 2024.
Since Monday of that week, the Minister’s word has been translated into deed. In the Muruta and Kabarore communes visited by ABP, tea growers welcome the fact that they are now receiving the premium of 70BIF per kilo of green leaves for the first instalment, and are confident that the second instalment of 56BIF per kilo of tea leaves will reach them very soon.
Those same tea growers promise to sensitize their peers who have already uprooted their tea bushes to get their act together by multiplying other tea plants, especially as that industrial crop benefits not only the country, but also the tea growers and the entire Burundian people.
They took the opportunity to ask the authorities to consider raising the price of green tea leaves, especially as that is a crop that requires a great deal of expenditure to increase production in terms of both quality and quantity.