Tobacco firm in novel empowerment drive

ETHICAL Leaf Tobacco (ELT) is empowering its workforce through financing them to grow tobacco under the A1 scheme to improve their livelihoods and morale.

The firm, which has become one of the largest indigenous tobacco contractors, is stopping at nothing to support Zim-Asset.

ELT chief executive Mr David Machingaidze said this unique approach to empowerment would see the company becoming an employer of choice and driver of staff economic empowerment.

“The broad-based empowerment and a unique employer/employee relationship, which is different from the existing zero sum game where what’s good for the one is bad for the other is not the best approach in any business,” said Mr Machingaidze.

He said the company’s ability to empower its workforce underscored Zim-Asset objectives and President Mugabe’s 10-Point Plan for Economic Growth that sought to grow the economy, accelerate wealth creation, achieve sustainable development and social equity through empowerment and employment creation.

“Our thinking has been inspired by the success story of smallholder tobacco production and President Mugabe’s unwavering commitment to the principle of broad- based economic empowerment,” said Mr Machingaidze.

He said President Mugabe’s clarion call for indigenous ownership of the economy was based on his desire to correct historical marginalisation and exclusion of indigenous people from the mainstream economy stemming from the colonial era.

Mr Machingaidze said ELT’s agronomists were on the ground empowering their contracted growers through educating them on how to improve agricultural and labour practices.

“We have found that this comprehensive approach helps to ensure that growers see an improved standard and quality of life,” said Mr Machingaidze.

“When growers become more efficient, their yields and quality improve, thereby increasing their income and freeing up other resources such as land, water and finances, so that they can grow other crops to supplement their income and food.”

In addition to education, ELT strategically developed farmer input packages tailored to meet the needs of each contracted grower.

These packages, Mr Machingaidze said, varied by country, tobacco type and type of contract, and their agronomists worked carefully to select the right inputs to include in the packages.