Members of Masinga Sand Harvesting Cooperative who are mainly residents of Kaewa location of Masinga sub county, Machakos county, have claimed to lack trust in their leaders who have had several consecutive failures in leading the Cooperative Society. Most of the members met on Monday in Kaewa market to reassure each other that the exercise of choosing other leaders was still set to be held on Tuesday of 9th December. This decision was made in another meeting attended by 31 members still in Kaewa market about a week ago.
Speaking during the meeting, a member, Denis Katia said that the current leadership lacked transparency and were doing things behind the members backs.
"The officials took a loan without the common members consent and built a rental building in Matuu town; no member has benefited from that building and it is already on sale,'' explained Mr. Katia.
Katia further explained that the officials of the society had failed to plan for the payment of the loan that was invested in the building the rental houses and were therefore forced to sell it so as to be able to repay the loan before the court issues an auctioning go ahead. The other grievances the members held against the society's leadership were, corruption, lack of annual general meetings in which members get briefs concerning the running of the Cooperative and also get to air the opinions.
They also complained of poor record keeping and poor management generally making the society achieve very little.
"We are not going to sit and watch our Cooperative Society go down, we are going to correct everything starting with the eradication of corrupt, uncommitted and irresponsible leaders and work to improve the Cooperative under the new leaders that we are going to appoint on Wednesday 9th this month," added another member, Benjamin Mbatha Ndolo.