Anti-tobacco activists and some members of Parliament have voiced grave concern over massive consumption of tobacco-related products, increased child labour on tobacco farms and poor enforcement of tobacco control laws in the country.
They said if left unchecked, the trend could subject Tanzanians to serious health and environmental threats.
Activists under the umbrella of Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum have released shocking findings of a recent research which showed an alarming trend in the use of child labour, human trafficking and slavery in the country’s tobacco farming.
“Illegal trade (trafficking in children for tobacco farming)…it’s disheartening…it’s disappointing. The concerned authorities are silent,” said Lutgard Kagaruki, the forum's executive director yesterday.
On Saturday, the country’s anti-tobacco lobby organized a special seminar for members of Parliament to educate them on the magnitude of tobacco consumption and farming on peoples’ health, the environment and the country’s future.
“Apart from tobacco being a major cause of many diseases, tobacco farming has a negative impact on the environment,” she told a news conference yesterday, noting that research conducted by the forum in Tabora region, the leader in tobacco farming, revealed that 139,269 cubic metres of trees were cut for the purpose of curing tobacco, with an economic cost of 16.7bn/-, while the cost of replacing the trees was 3.1bn/-.
She said many children were illegally being trafficked from as far as neighbouring Burundi, Kagera and Kigoma regions and other parts of Tanzanians to Tabora where they were forced to work as labourers on tobacco plantations.
“Out of these children, our research spotted about ten students. They were taken by agents from home and promised hefty salaries (between 200,000/- and 300,000/- monthly) as domestic workers. However, when they reach there, the agents sell the children to owners of tobacco plantations with prices ranging from 80,000/= to 100,000/= per head, who use them as plantation labourers,” noted the TTCF director.
According to Kagaruki, approximately 11 per cent of Tanzanians smoke, and thus end up contracting diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and increased risk of tuberculosis (TB).
She added that approximately 38,000 to 42,000 new cases of cancer occurs annually in Tanzania as a direct result of tobacco use.
Evan Blecher, an economist from the International Tobacco Control Research American Cancer Society, proposed to the Tanzanian government to impose higher taxes on tobacco products as a strategy to reduce their consumption and increase revenue.
“An increase in tobacco taxes by 10 per cent, more than inflation over the next five years, will help to reduce consumption by between 8.4 per cent and 13.1 per cent over the next five years,” he said during the TTCF seminar.SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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