Caption: Over twenty people have died this year after consumption of illicit brews (file/PHOTO)
The production, sale and consumption of local brews chang'aa and busaa is now legal. This follows the signing into law by president Mwai Kibaki the Alcoholic Drink Control Bill 2010 passed by parliament on June 24.
The new law now regulates the production sale and consumption of the traditional alcoholic drinks and sets standards on how to produce and package them.
It was a bill coined in the wake of spiralling deaths of Kenyans due to consumption of illegal brews distilled in unhygienic conditions and adulterated with industrial chemicals in a bid to make the brews more portent.
This year alone more than twenty peopple have died after consuming illegally brewed drinks, mostly in Nairobi.
And to bring a stop to such tragedies Naivasha legislator John Mututho moved a motion in parliament to have a law that could regulate the production and consumption of traditional brews.
Mututho had argued that by legalizing these drinks, a clear mechanism would be put in place to monitor and standardize their production.
Two months down the line the president has finally made it law to have the drinks in the shelves.
The bill has repealed the liquor licensing act and the chang'aa prohibition act making Kenya join its eastern African counterparts that have allowed consumption of traditional brews.
The president however declined to sign into law 3 bills including the Price Control (essential goods) bill, 2009, the indemnity repeal bill 2010, and the animal technicians bill 2010 but assented to the commissions of inquiry bill and the prevention of organized crime bill 2007.
In a memorandum the president said the price control bill that provides for the mandatory control of prices by the government of essential goods including maize, rice, cooking oil, sugar, paraffin and fuel as crafted was inconsistent with the policy of economic liberation.
He said the bill as it was spelt out was a violation of the fundamental principle of the world trade organization agreement on national treatment of which Kenya is a contracting party with an obligation to avoid measures, including price controls that would have prejudicial effects on other contracting parties supplying imported products to Kenya.
He wants MPs to instead amend the bill to provide for the regulation of the prices of essential commodities in order to secure their availability at reasonable prices.
He also wants clause 6 that prescribes the offences and penalties for contravening the act to be looked at afresh for purposes of consistency and provide any person who contravenes the act be liable to conviction to a fine not exceeding one million shillings or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years or both.
The price control bill was sponsored by Mathira MP Ephraim Maina.
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