Cape Town - As this Friday’s deadline for public comment on the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill draws near, the battle between health professionals in favour of the bill and those calling for the delay or scrapping of the proposed legislation is heating up.
Last week in Cape Town the National Informal Traders Alliance of South Africa (Nitasa), which represents thousands of informal traders, hawkers, spaza shop owners and home-based operators, said more time was needed for public participation.
Pleading with Parliament’s portfolio committee on health for a 60-day extension to the August 4 deadline for public submissions, Nitasa president Rosheda Muller argued that the call for submissions was only published in newspapers on June 25.
Muller argued most traders were not even aware of the bill and had yet to understand the impact it would have on their livelihoods and ability to trade.
She said: “Nitasa members don’t sit at a desk all day writing emails with access to wi-fi.
“In order to make a submission, traders will need to meet their organisations, probably after hours, then access a computer and develop a submission which then needs to be agreed to by members.
“Then they have to find an internet connection in order to send it to Parliament.”
She said most traders often didn’t have money for data to send messages to members and the government was simply paying lip service to the idea of public consultation.
National Council Against Smoking deputy director Dr Sharon Nyatsanza said: “The delays in the Tobacco Control Bill have hurt South Africa.
“A full five years after the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill was first published for public comment by the government, it is still not finalised,” she said.
Nyatsanza said based on 2016 figures, every year over 25 000 people over 35 die directly due to smoking, and over 200000 people become sick from smoking-related diseases including cancer, heart and lung disease.
“It costs the economy more than R42 billion annually to treat these tobacco-related illnesses, and in lost productivity. That is the price South Africa has paid.”
At a media briefing early in July, Limpopo Tobacco Processors director François van der Merwe argued the case against the bill.
He said there were farmers who grow the tobacco used in SA tobacco products and they in turn employ thousands of people in rural areas.
SA Medical Research Council specialist scientist Dr Catherine Egbe said it was clear the tobacco and e-cigarette industries were continuing to step up efforts to prevent the bill from being passed.
“In a common tobacco industry propaganda technique, the facts are being twisted in a last-ditch attempt to sway public opinion.
“This is often based on the only arguments the industry can distort and latch on to – jobs, punishment such as jail time, illicit trade and ‘harm reduction’ through e-cigarettes.”
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za