Kiambu county residents spend Ksh14 billion on alcohol annually, figures from the National Authority for Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) show.
NACADA chairman John Mututho says a recent research revealed that half of the county’s adult population drink alcohol. He said given that there are 861,000 registered voters in the county, there are more than 450,000 drinkers who spend Ksh300 each on booze everyday, amounting to more than Ksh40 million daily.
He said the decline in production and quality of coffee and tea in Central Kenya should not be attributed to changes in global markets and emergence of real estate alone. Mututho said more than half of labour on workforce is lost as alcohol abuse reduces the productive population to zombies while income from farming and other economic activities is spent on booze at the expense of farm inputs and development.
He was speaking at the Bomas of Kenya in Nairobi at the close of a three-day national conference on alcohol and drug abuse. The conference brought on board delegates from county governments, academicians and religious leaders to deliberate on the fight against drug abuse.
(THE STAR)
