16 members of the Satemwa Tea Estate Workers Joint Body arrived at Kibena Tea Estate, Mbeya Province after a long journey from Thyolo in Southern Malawi. Kibena is one of three estates forming the Mufindi Tea Group.
The first surprise for the group was to find that during peak season, the workforce is just 400 (compared to around 2,500 at Satemwa), due to plucking being mechanised and requiring only two people to operate the machinery.
The group became Fairtrade certified in 1998 and the joint body has spent close to US$2million (about MWK9.2M ) on projects around the estate and in the community, focusing on education, health, water, social and entertainment. Similarly to Satemwa, they pay school fees for some of the children of workers and have built teachers houses. In addition, they have been able to provide one of their schools with computers.
The JB could sympathise with some of the challenges faced by the host joint body such as the need to make sure that the strict fairtrade standards are always adhered to as well as the high expectations of workers and communities despite lower premiums being received. It was also noted that Kibena had a good working relationship with the surrounding communities and that the big projects they had worked on (social halls, 8 bore holes) had had a great impact, with many beneficiaries. They were interested to hear about our solar projects and experiences since fairtrade certification.
The Kibena Joint body members have promised to visit Satemwa and all of the JB members agreed that the visit was extremely valuable and had opened their eyes to some new ideas for the day-to-day running of the JB.
We would also like to thank the Satemwa Management for allowing the JB members time away from the estate during this trip.
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