Sick Timau farm workers seek to join court case over hazardous pesticides
Eighty-seven people from the Timau area want to join a court petition against the government and five agrochemical firms. Tests done for the petitioners found high levels of paraquat and glyphosate in all of them, the Guardian reports.
Farm workers in Timau, a horticultural town in central Kenya, say pesticides made them seriously ill. The Guardian reports that 87 of them want to join a court petition against the Kenyan government and agrochemical companies over the sale of highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs). The court is expected to decide early next year whether to admit them. One of them is Reuben Muriki, 30, a former pesticide sprayer on a flower farm. Several years ago he fainted at home, and his health has worsened since. His joints swelled, his skin became discoloured and he struggled to breathe. Doctors treated him for suspected tuberculosis, but the treatment did not help. Today he cannot walk on his own, speaks incoherently and quickly forgets things. His mother, Margaret Mwanjaro, cares for him around the clock and blames the pesticides he sprayed. The nonprofit African Centre for Corrective and Preventive Action and lawyer Kelvin Kubai filed the petition in 2022. It accuses Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF and Nairobi-based Twiga Chemical Industries of selling pesticides with lethal active ingredients in Kenya. Last November, the court let the petitioners invite people allegedly harmed by 11 pesticide ingredients to join. That would turn the case into a class action. Kubai, who comes from Timau, said the government and the companies had neglected these people. He said Kenyan farmers deserve the same protection as farmers in the US and Europe. Scientists hired by the petitioners tested all 87 applicants for paraquat…
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