Tobacco work ‘harmful to children in Zim’
PEOPLE who work on Zimbabwe’s tobacco farms, particularly children, face serious risks, especially to their health and education.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) told media in Harare this week that abuses around child labour are tarnishing the tobacco industry’s contributions to Zimbabwe’s growth.
Zimbabwe is the world’s sixthlargest tobacco producer and is its most valuable export, which earned $933 million in 2016.
HRW produced a report, “A Bitter Harvest: Child Labour and Human Rights Abuses on Tobacco Farms in Zimbabwe”. It says that children working with tobacco operate within hazardous conditions and are exposed to nicotine and toxic pesticides.
It says many suffer symptoms consistent with nicotine poisoning from handling tobacco leaves.
“Zimbabwe’s government needs to take urgent steps to protect tobacco workers,” said Margaret Wurth, children’s rights researcher and co-author of the report. “Companies sourcing tobacco from Zimbabwe should ensure that they are not buying a crop produced by child workers sacrificing their health and education.”
HRW conducted research in four provinces responsible for nearly all Zimbabwe’s tobacco production and interviewed 125 small-scale tobacco farmers and hired workers, including children or former child workers, in late 2016 and early last year.
HRW found that the government and tobacco companies have generally not provided training and equipment to protect themselves from nicotine poisoning and pesticide exposure, but said it found similar conditions on tobacco farms in research in other countries, including the US.
Some of the world’s largest multinational tobacco companies, such as British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco Group and Imperial Brands, buy tobacco from growers directly, although a small proportion is still sold via the auctions floors.
HRW contacted companies that collectively bought 86% of Zimbabwe’s tobacco. Most do have policies prohibiting suppliers from using child labour, but there were “serious gaps in monitoring the policies” in Zimbabwe.
It says tobacco companies should “explicitly… prohibit contact by children with tobacco in any form”.
It said the most serious health risk on tobacco farms was acute nicotine poisoning, or Green Tobacco Sickness, caused by absorbing nicotine through the skin from tobacco plants.
Research on smoking suggests that nicotine exposure during childhood and adolescence may affect brain development. Zimbabwean law sets 16 as the minimum age for employment and prohibits children under 18 from performing hazardous work, but does not specifically ban children from handling tobacco.