“Multinational tobacco companies operating in Pakistan are doing their very best to put aside ordinary purchasers of tobacco leaf from the markets thus to easily exploit tobacco growers of the districts SwabiCharsadda and Mardan.”
SWABI (Pakistan Point News - 10th Jun, 2020) “Multinational tobacco companies operating in Pakistan are doing their very best to put aside ordinary purchasers of tobacco leaf from the markets thus to easily exploit tobacco growers of the districts SwabiCharsadda and Mardan.” Said, Abrarullah, President MehnatKashLabor Federation of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in an exclusive talk with Urdu Point.
He said that tobacco is the only cash crop of Mardan upon which thousands of farmers, industry workers, and their family members are dependent. In Swabi/Mardan, there are only two major crops; Wheat and Tobacco. Unfortunately, we only saved 40% of wheat due to bad weather conditions. How can we let these multinational companies play with the livelihoods of our people that are connected with the tobacco industry?
Abrarullah told UrduPoint that farmers and industry labor unions of KP have requested the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan to take notice of an additional tax of Rs 500 per kg on tobacco leaf during the upcoming budget 2020/21. He accused the two multinational tobacco companies of pushing the government to impose such tax. “We are well aware of the vested interest of these companies and would go every mile to push the government not to listen to this suggestion”, said Abrarullah.
He told that farmers and industry labor unions of KP have also requested AsadQaiser, Speaker National Assembly and to the elected members of both national and provincial assemblies to take hold of this situation and to hold any imposition of such brutal tax which would be enough to roll back huge tobacco sector from the KP.
The representatives blamed that the multinational tobacco companies operating in Pakistan are having strong lobby within decision making authorities of governments. This lobby has pushed the government to mull such brutal tax directly on a tobacco leaf. Through this tax, the local buyer of tobacco would lose strength to purchase tobacco from the farmers, resultantly these multinational companies would enjoy the full authority of the tobacco leaf and exploit tobacco farmers according to their very own will.
Abrarullah lamented that these multinational companies would then look towards international markets in a bid to fulfill the local demand of the cigarette market which will directly affect the national economy and tax collections in return. “Through tobacco, the government earns billions of rupees in terms of taxes every year. The imposition of any such tax would badly affect this sector as thousands of workers associated with this sector would go jobless and the thousands of families dependent upon them would face the impact”, concluded Abrarullah.
