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Anti-tobacco leaders on Saturday raised a demand for the adoption of tobacco tax and price measures free from industry interference to safeguard public health.
They made the call during a webinar styled 'Tobacco Tax and Price Measures: Industry Ill Tactics and the Needful' hosted with support from the Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids (CTFK).
Each year before the framing of the national budget, tobacco industry employs a number of ill tactics to stave off any increase in tobacco taxes and prices.
Bidi factory owners also magnify the size of their workforce to a great extent to extract benefits by using the spectre of mass lay-offs before budget.
A 2019 study of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) refutes such claims of bidi factory owners.
The total number of full-time equivalent bidi workers (regular, irregular and contractual) stands at 46,916 which is only 0.074 per cent of the country's total workforce (63.5 million), it reveals.
Md Hasan Shahriar, project head of tobacco control in PROGGA, made a keynote presentation.
Panel discussants included Md Mostafizur Rahman, Bangladesh lead policy adviser of CTFK, Md Shafiqul Islam, Bangladesh country adviser, Vital Strategies, Prof Dr Sohel Reza Chowdhury of epidemiology and research dept at National Heart Foundation, Doulot Akter Mala, special correspondent of The Financial Express, Iqbal Masud, director, Health and WASH sector, Dhaka Ahsania Mission, and ABM Zubair, executive director at PROGGA.
The webinar was also attended by representatives from different anti-tobacco organisations.
As tobacco claims 161,000 lives annually and causes disabilities in hundreds of thousands of people, anti-tobacco leaders urged policymakers not to succumb to industry's manipulative and invalid arguments.
They also raised the demands for tax and price rises in the national budget.
According to a 2021 World Health Organisation report, Bangladesh ranks 107th among 165 countries on the basis of affordability of cigarettes (165th being the most affordable).