Leaf growers want say at FCTC meetings

The International Tobacco Growers’ Association (ITGA) yesterday urged the World Health Organization to engage with growers when parties to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) developed polices impacting growers’ livelihoods, according to a Xinhua News Agency report.

ITGA President Francois van der Merwe said at the end of a two-day regional annual meeting in the Zimbabwean capital Harare that tobacco growers were concerned about their exclusion from FCTC meetings where crucial decisions were made about regulating the tobacco industry.

“We don’t know what they are going to propose,” Van der Merwe said in reference to the meeting of the FCTC’s Conference of the Parties scheduled for Moscow in October. “We are worried because we have not been involved.”

Van der Merwe said the ITGA had produced a seven-point declaration in which it called for reasonable, sensible and evidence-based proposals by the FCTC to regulate the sector.