Ghanaians Eager For Ban On Smoking In Public Places

Fifty-eight-year-old Ghanaian civil servant Kwaku Anku has been a smoker for over 40 years. Despite knowing the dangers of cigarettes, he has no intention of kicking the habit. After all, he says, his grandfather was a smoker and he lived to the ripe old age of 84.

Anku respects the sensibilities of non-smokers and chooses not to light up in the workplace, but he does smoke in bars and restaurants, but maybe not for much longer.

Ghana's chief anti-smoking campaigner, the director-general of the country's health service, Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, is stepping up a campaign to ban smoking in public places as a bill to ban smoking in public places continues to gather dust.

Akosa is threatening to march on the seat of government with a signed petition over the government's failure to act on smoking.

"Eighteen months is too long for the bill to be with cabinet," says an exasperated Akosa, who is also calling for a ban on tobacco advertising and the imposition of higher taxes on cigarettes.

A survey by the Ghana Health Service conducted in October and November 2006 revealed that 96 per cent of Ghanaians are in favour of legislation on tobacco control.

Studies show that some 14.3 per cent of pupils in junior secondary schools have tried smoking before the age of 18 and a whopping 45 per cent of residents in the three northern regions, Northern Region, Upper East Region and Upper West Region, are addicted to smoking.

The government may have developed cold feet on a smoking ban because of the large amount of taxes it collects from British American Tobacco (BAT), the sole cigarette manufacturer in Ghana.

For example, BAT, which has some 90 per cent of the Ghanaian tobacco market, contributed about 5.9 per cent of Ghana's GDP between 1986 and 1990 and saved the government 1.7 million dollars during the same period as 80 per cent of raw materials were produced locally, instead of it being imported.

The company employed, before the decision late last year to close down the factory, some 245 staff in 10 stations in various tobacco producing areas and about 20,000 retailers.

Some 1,300 farmers and their families depend for a living on tobacco with their total income in 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available, amounting to some 2.1 million dollars.

But BAT is closing down its plant in Ghana in what it has described as an ongoing drive to minimize costs of production.

Tony Okwoju, corporate affairs manager at BAT in Ghana, says the company will now sell products imported from its subsidiaries.

BAT Ghana is also the single biggest private company in afforestation, having planted about 4.5 million trees on nearly 3,800 hectares of plantation.

Some of it is designed to help cure its tobacco from fuelwood. Heat from the wood is used to cure the tobacco, hence the need to replace wood that is cut for the purpose.

The company is also promoting water protection programme in several areas throughout the country and awards scholarships to university students.

But, as Akosa warns, "Smoking kills and there is no way we should allow people to buy death."