TOBACCO Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) is implementing strict measures to guard against child labour, including strict age verification processes to ensure that only adults can access selling premises as the marketing commences next Wednesday.
The 2024 Auction tobacco marketing season opens while contract tobacco sales will start the following day.
Child labour is rampant in many tobacco growing areas worldwide with one in four children are in child labour with 70% working in agriculture, mostly on family farms, in Sub-Saharan Africa.
According to a Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Survey on child labour in the Tobacco Sector 2019, about 26% of the children aged 5 – 15 years were involved in tobacco activities in the seven days preceding the survey. Most of these children were in communal areas.
TIMB is working “flat out” to ensure that no children were involved in the production and marketing of tobacco in Zimbabwe, according to TIMB Head of Operations, Blessing Dhokotera.
“All selling points shall ensure there are no children under the age of 18 in and around selling premises, tobacco processing factories and any other tobacco storage and handling facilities,” Dhokotera said while addressing the 2024 Media interface, an annual engagement held before the start of the marketing season.
“All selling points shall actively spearhead child labour awareness campaigns at their respective premises, including displaying relevant posters and fliers. Tobacco sales floors should implement strict age verification processes to ensure that only adults can access the premises,” he added.
TIMB, primarily a regulatory and advisory statutory body whose functions include to control and regulate the exchange of all tobacco produced in Zimbabwe between growers and merchants, recently convened a multisectoral child labour workshop which brought together government, National to generating solutions to combat child labour.
“Sales floors should prominently display awareness campaigns that highlight the issue of child labor in tobacco production-banners, posters, and educational materials that provide information about the harmful and unethical practices associated with child labor,” said Dhokotera.
As the marketing season commences, TIMB has also come up with a Transporter Compliance Framework which will work towards developing a vibrant system that monitors the movement of tobacco from the primary source up to the market. In this regard losses are minimized therefore increasing farmer viability resulting to improved livelihood by 2025.
The framework seeks to counter challenges in the tobacco industry and criminal activities such as side marketing, tobacco bale theft, bale swapping and forgery on stop order launching.
Contract tobacco sales will be conducted in Harare and approved decentralized selling centres of Karoi, Mvurwi, Bindura, Marondera and Rusape – 44 selling centres.
Two auction floors, Tobacco Sales Floor (TSF) and Premier Tobacco Auction Floor (PTAF), will operate in the 2024 season.
Tobacco farmers shall be paid 75% of their sales proceeds in foreign currency and the 25% portion shall be paid in local currency on net proceeds, after settlement of all the loans, levies and other marketing costs.
The foreign currency component shall be deposited into farmers’ nostro accounts whilst the ZWL$ shall be deposited into ZWL$ accounts.
