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Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy said tobacco, alcohol and over-eating are factors destroying people’s health.
Addressing a workshop, Dr. Ramsammy said tobacco is the only killer substance in the world that is legalised. “We have to fight against tobacco,” he said.
The Health Minister said all public places in the country should become smoke free zones. To this end, on May 1, all health facilities will be declared smoke free zones. There has also been a declaration by the Ministry of Education to make all schools, public and private, smoke free zones. The Minister also encouraged workplaces to become smoke free zones.
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Demerara Tobacco Company Limited, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, p.l.c., buys a branded product from a fellow subsidiary, pays more than US$600,000 in 'royalties' to the parent company, has one single distributor and no more than fourteen employees and pays another US$1,000,000 for management services from fellow subsidiaries and technical and advisory services from the ultimate parent company. The company also has an average of in excess of another US$1,000,000 due from a related party on which it receives no interest.
The company will be holding its 72nd Annual General Meeting this coming Thursday to announce that despite the floods which 'hampered distribution', the company has increased its profits before tax by some 6% on an increase in sales of 2% (on a 3.5% increase in volume).
Last May, after the high-visibility Minister of Health returned from one of his overseas trips he announced to the press that anti-tobacco legislation, like Tarzan, would be 'coming soon'. One year later, there is no legislation and the company that controls 97% of the market announces that its sales of cigarettes have increased by 18,000,000 sticks!
One year after announcing that his ministry would be conducting a survey biennially, the company can boast of the huge success with its after-work lime and music competition promising original music or an iPod - hardly the sort of thing that attracts non-youths. . . .
presenting an extremely attractive return to the group. The attempt by the company to justify a royalty payment of G$130M, by stating that the product is manufactured to 'predetermined specifications' is hardly convincing even to a non-smoker who can buy the same product almost anywhere outside of Guyana. And while every company can and should determine its business model, paying US$1M, for management services when all the company does is bring in a product and sell it immediately to a sole distributor seems to defy business logic. That Business Page has been sharply attacked by the company for raising some of these very issues in the past ought not to make them less worthy of repetition particularly in the absence of reasonable justification. Surely even Guyanese shareholders must be willing to put aside their appreciation of good dividends in the broader fiscal and national interest.
MINISTER of Foreign Affairs, Rudy Insanally, on behalf of the Government of Guyana deposited Guyana’s Instrument of Accession to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control at a recently concluded high level plenary meeting in New York.
The convention was the 60th session of the United Nations General Assembly which sought to provide a framework for tobacco control measures to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke.
A release from the Foreign Affairs Ministry yesterday stated that the Minister also deposited the Instrument of Ratification to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
Austria, Kiribati, Bolivia and Guyana are not hugely important in the overall scheme of things in motorsport, although Austria's Red Bull company is a useful source of funding for a large number of racers. The four countries have, however, recently signed the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and by doing so have raised the number of countries to have ratified the global ban on tobacco sponsorship to 83, which is just one country short of half of the 168 nations that signed the treaty. Each new signatory adds pressure to the big players who have not yet ratified the treaty, notably the United States of America.
Guyana will soon accede to the World Health Organi-sation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), says Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy.
Back from the 58th session of the World Health Assembly held in Geneva from May 16-25, Minister Ramsammy said the country has up to November to accept the treaty which will be international law in less than 90 days, following ratification by 40 countries in the past 17 months.
According to him, Foreign Affairs Minister Rudy Insanally will soon deposit an instrument of accreditation to the United Nations headquarters in New York as part of the process. Already, Ramsammy said, he has prepared a motion to take before the National Assembly. He noted that it would be on the order paper when the assembly meets at the next sitting.
It is scandalous. Women the world over should be outraged. A study conducted by Harvard University's School of Public Health has found that the tobacco industry deliberately set out to get women addicted to smoking and considered using appetite suppressants and chocolate-flavoured cigarettes as a means of doing so. . . .
World No-Tobacco Day was observed this week, on May 31. At the end of February, WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control came into force, making tobacco control legally binding on the 40 countries that had signed on prior to November 2004. Guyana, strangely, was not among those countries. And stranger still it has not yet signed on despite all the recent rhetoric about smoke-free zones. When he announced Guyana's intention to adopt the treaty last week Saturday, the Minister of Health also mentioned plans to implement a programme for people desirous of quitting. Given the revelations of the Harvard research, one would hope that a special effort would be made to target women. One would also hope that this could come on stream almost immediately, since it will be an internal health initiative, which will not require a treaty.
Two armed bandits in a daring daylight robbery on Monday hijacked a minibus belonging to Edward B. Beharry and Company Ltd and escaped with $1.3 million at Skeldon, Corentyne, Berbice.
The bus usually sells cigarettes five times a week in different areas on the Corentyne and was robbed around 1.45 pm as the employees were about to deposit their daily sales at a bank at Skeldon.
Cabinet has agreed to ratify the Framework Conventions on Tobacco Controls, says Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon.
Speaking at his post-Cabinet press conference on Wednes-day, Luncheon said the Ministry of Health would be moving to Parliament with the enabling motion, the adoption of which would see Guyana depositing the Instrument of Ratification at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York.
A Rupununi man accused of shooting his friend in his back with an arrow was on Monday remanded to prison by Magistrate Maxwell Edwards.
Mark Francis allegedly wounded Mark Frank on January 2.
According to the police report, the accused and the complainant attended a New Year's celebration at a residence in Aranaputa Valley, North Rupununi where they along with other villagers consumed a local Amerindian beverage. After the party, Frank asked Francis for a cigarette. Francis replied in the negative and reportedly threatened to chop Frank.