Farmers threaten to report TAZ to ACC

SMALL-SCALE tobacco farmers have threatened to report the Tobacco Association of Zambia (TAZ) to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) for allegedly selling a processing plant along Mungwi Road Lusaka without their consent.

In an interview yesterday, Chilufya Chishala, a tobacco grower from Eastern Province, said small-scale farmers were scheduled to report TAZ to the ACC today.

Mr Chishala accused TAZ of working with of the tobacco firms, while have been going round the country and misleading poor farmers into signing a petition to revoke SI 84 and 85, enacted to protect not only the farmers but government also in ensuring that the 2 percent levy remitted by farmers is collected without delay.

Efforts to get a comment from TAZ general manager, Albert van Wyk, by press time proved futile as his mobile phone went unanswered. “We are in the process of finalising the documents which we expect to present today to the Anti-Corruption Commission against the Tobacco Association of Zambia for appropriate action,” Mr Chishala said.

Last month at a press briefing in Lusaka, the farmers who spoke through Mr Saidi Phiri, a farmer from Central Province, accused some tobacco companies of evading tax by not remitting the tobacco levy collected from the farmers.

Mr. Phiri said the government, as a result, was losing more than K15 million in statutory levies.

“To date all the Zambian indigenous tobacco farmers have been pushed out of the factory ownership by the association that should have protected their interest at the time,” he said.

Mr. Phiri observed that, “We believe that some civil servants in other government departments who are beneficiaries are undermining the Ministry of Agriculture by aiding this illegality.”

Meanwhile, the farmers have accused TAZ and some tobacco companies of trying to incite the small scale farmers against the government and to have the new statutory instruments repealed. The farmers accused TAZ of working with a cartel of white commercial farmers in projecting the voice of the over 36,000 indigenous farmers in a bid to have the white farmers dominated industry dissolve all associations of small scale farmers countrywide.