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VICE-PRESIDENT, George Kunda, has said there is need to ensure that the law against smoking passed by the Ministry of Local Government and Housing statutory instrument is supported through strong and consistent enforcement.
Mr Kunda said in Lusaka yesterday that the enforcement of the law prohibiting smoking in public places and promotion of smoking cessation was feasible as long as there was commitment from all stakeholders to the programme.
Mr Kunda said this in a speech read on his behalf by Health Deputy Minister, Mwendoi Akakandelewa, during the Zambia Tobacco control campaign programme at Mulungushi International Conference Centre (MICC) in Lusaka.
The Government last year issued Statutory Instrument number 39 of 2008, which prohibits smoking in public places.
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THE Tobacco Free Association of Zambia (TOFAZ) has resorted to the use of performing arts in its campaign to discourage the cultivation and consumption of tobacco.
TOFAZ executive director Brenda Chitindi said during a tobacco control workshop in Lusaka yesterday that the organisation intended to use all effective means to free the nation from tobacco.
Ms Chitindi said the organisation wanted to sensitise the tobacco consumers through the use of drama groups to get the message across.
She said using artistic means to sensitise the nation would be the easiest way of delivering the message to the nation.
She said most of the youth lacked knowledge on the dangers of consuming tobacco and needed to be sensitised. . . .
She said the programme would be funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) under the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Meanwhile, Institute of Economic and Social Research researcher Richard Zulu said that there was need to implement the World Health Organisation framework convention on tobacco control.
SOS Children is launching a new campaign asking smokers to "quit for Africa".
"Even though everyone understands the health benefits" said ex-smoker and fundraising director Kathie Neal "giving up smoking is a long and painful haul which requires sticking power. Knowing that the money you save is directly helping children alone could really help".
Even if they buy some cigarettes abroad, smoking ten cigarettes a day typically costs a smoker between £60 and £120 a month, the same as the cost of 3 to 6 child sponsorships. SOS Children suggests that to increase the satisfaction of quitting and help smokers to celebrate their ongoing achievement they use just 60p a day, a small part of this saving, to sponsor a child in Zambia, Zimbabwe or Malawi, tobacco-growing areas of Africa. SOS Children helps children throughout Africa
"The actual benefit to the African worker from a tobacco smoker is tiny, since the losers when you quit smoking are mainly the tax man and tobacco companies (who get most of the money from cigarettes" explained SOS CEO Andrew Cates "but nonetheless it seems appropriate to give something back to the countries which will lose the export".
THE Government will soon issue guidelines to give fresh impetus to a statutory instrument that bans smoking in public places.
Local Government and Housing Minister Sylvia Masebo said in Lusaka yesterday that the public places as referred to in statutory instrument (SI) 39 of 2008 are premises, buildings, conveyances and other places to which the public has access.
Launching a youth smoking prevention campaign by British American Tobacco (BAT), Ms Masebo said the ministry would soon issue regulations to guide the public on the prohibition of smoking in public places.
She appealed to service providers running bars, nightclubs, restaurants and other patronised places to ensure that they accommodated smoking patrons in designated areas by way of demarcation. Ms Masebo said the youth should be prevented from accessing tobacco.
BRITISH American Tobacco has lost K300 million in illicit inflows of sweet menthol cigarettes in Northern Province.
BAT managing director, Lovemore Manatsa said there was an illegal inflow of 110 cases monthly of the sweet menthol cigarettes in the province.
He said this translated into K300 million in the revenue losses to BAT, Government and other legitimate players in the market.
He disclosed this in an interview in Lusaka yesterday. Mr Manatsa said the illicit inflows also made it difficult for the legitimate players to gauge the true size of the cigarette market in Zambia.
But the country, while still pursing the diversification agenda, has not given up the fight to rescue a crop that is very much the backbone of the country’s economy as oil is to the Middle East. This time, however, Malawi does not want to continue with the battle alone. Economic Report has established that Malawi has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with tobacco producing countries of Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to help position the industry so that the countries reap more. Industry, Trade and Private Sector Minister Ken Lipenga said in an interview that the MOU was signed last November. Among other things, he said, the agreement looks at issues of collective marketing as well as value-adding.
OVER 6,000 children are working on family tobacco farms, Choma district administrative officer Mungoni Simulilika has said.
During celebrations to mark the 10th anniversary of HODI, a local non-governmental Organisation in Choma, Simulilika said the figure did not include children working in local tobacco commercial farms.
He said there was rampant abuse of school children by tobacco farmers.
"According to the baseline survey conducted by HODI early this year, Mbabala and Tara areas were found to be the prime tobacco areas with high incidences of children working in tobacco farms," he said. Simulilika said the survey also revealed that the children performed hazardous tasks such as lifting heavy loads, spraying chemicals and working excessively long hours.
The British American Tobacco (BAT) Plc board has assured the company's shareholders that the company will not pull out of Zambia.
The board had a tough time last Friday at the company's annual general meeting trying to explain the company's new business model, which the minority shareholders did not favour.
The board has proposed a change in the company's strategy, to focus only on the marketing and distribution of cigarettes. It proposed the cessation of cigarette manufacturing at the company's Lusaka factory by June 30, 2006 and the disposal of the current head office and factory and any other assets no longer required by the company following the cessation of cigarette manufacturing.
About 80 workers will lose jobs as the multinational company closes down its manufacturing plant opting for importation and distribution of cigarettes from Kenya and South Africa.
AGRICULTURE and Cooperatives Minister Mundia Sikatana says there is need for all stakeholders in the tobacco industry to dialogue and find a way forward on the World Health Organisation (WHO) measures to restrict tobacco growing.
Mr Sikatana said in Lusaka yesterday in an interview that while the crop was bringing in so much money to the treasury, Zambia was under pressure from WHO to slow down tobacco growing because of health concerns.
The minister said the economic disadvantages of stopping growing tobacco were immense and could be more devastating than the effect of smoking.
"When you look at the numbers in terms of earnings and consequences of switching off from tobacco over night from this lucrative business, the question of stopping growing tobacco is not an easy issue for countries that depend on the crop," Mr Sikatana said.
White farmers who lost their land in Zimbabwe are helping neighbouring Zambia shore up its tobacco and maize production while steering clear of political controversy.
In the southern town of Choma, some 25 Zimbabwean farmers are leasing farmland to grow tobacco and maize for export and creating jobs for many poor Zambians and an "outbreak of money", officials say.
"Tobacco production has increased in the last three years because of the white Zimbabwean farmers who have introduced highly mechanized farming in Zambia," says Finance Minister Ngandu Magande.
Miklos Marffy lost his home, his farm and his crop two years ago when Zimbabwe's government seized his land near the northeastern town of Mvurwi. Last year, he grew $460,000 of tobacco in neighboring Zambia after a “reassuring” visit from President Levy Mwanawasa. Zimbabwe's neighbors are profiting from President Robert Mugabe's land redistribution program, which has ravaged the world's second-biggest tobacco export industry since 2000. More than 340 commercial farmers have relocated to Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania, creating jobs and boosting exports from some of the world's poorest countries. “The entry of Zimbabwean farmers into Zambia is a blessing to agriculture,” says Chance Kabaghe, 50, the chairman of Zambia Seed Co., who was deputy agriculture minister until last month and lives in the capital, Lusaka. “They bring with them the latest technology and knowledge.”
Universal Corp., the world's biggest tobacco-leaf merchant, and No. 3 Standard Commercial Corp. are backing the farmers
ZAMBIA Leaf Tobacco Company has targeted planting about four million trees during the 2004/5 season in flue-cured Virginia tobacco area to slow down accelerating deforestation.
Managing director Phil Rusch said it had become clear that flue-cured Virginia wood requirements, particularly in the small scale areas were accelerating deforestation as growers were targeting existing woodlands for their fuel wood needs.
The company has since arranged a series of sensitisation workshops across the country in areas covering Kaoma, Mkushi, Kabwe, Chisamba and Choma.
Mr Rusch said the company had realised that if no remedial action was taken immediately, the scarcity of wood would negatively impact on the environment and the area planted for flue-cured Virginia.
Through the workshops, the company would introduce the farmers to a number of indigenous and naturalised fast growing tree species that could be used as fuel wood for curing tobacco.
Douglas Watt is part of a most curious diaspora in Southern Africa: prosperous white farmers, vilified as greedy racists and driven out of Zimbabwe, looking for a home. . . .
Today Mr. Watt is one of about 140 white Zimbabwean farmers who have relocated to neighboring Zambia hoping, many say, for a mix of racial harmony and political stability that will enable them to prosper and contribute to black Africa. . . .
Mr. Watt has sunk $900,000 into his new farm, most of it borrowed from a bank and from the Universal Leaf Tobacco Company, based in Richmond, Va. "I have put every cent I have into this," Mr. Watt, 38, said, sitting in the dining room of his new ranch-style house. "I've got more invested here than I ever did in Zimbabwe. We will be an asset to the country."
Mr. Watt's move continues a long pattern of whites, increasingly uncertain of their welcome, who have hopscotched around the southern end of Africa in the last four decades. . . .
Aided by open government policies on leasing and investment — and by America's tobacco industry, which is underwriting much of the farm-building — farmers like Mr. Watt are already creating a more modest version of Zimbabwe's once mighty tobacco industry, which has been left in ruins after three years of land seizures. . . .
"We think we have benefited from the farmers who have come in," Mr. Kabaghe said. "We are very proud of them. Our tobacco industry is now booming."
At the same time, no official here wants the success of white farmers to be too visible, lest it engender the sort of racial backlash that has helped spur Zimbabwe's land takeovers and that is building in both South Africa and Namibia.
Nor do the tobacco companies want to be seen as the benefactors only of whites. Universal Leaf says it wants to develop 40 to 50 smaller, black-owned commercial farms on the periphery of the white-owned farms — a move Mr. Rusch says makes both political and economic sense.