THE Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) tells us that five tobacco exporters lost US$57 million last year alone due to side marketing.
TIMB also tells us that the actual losses to side marketing could even be much higher and the shenanigans also involve licensed contractors, who coax tobacco growers to pilfer tobacco from contractors who would have provided the farmers with inputs.
“This year, 2022, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board is on an accelerated drive to end tobacco side marketing. This criminal practice is responsible for the loss of millions of dollars annually and has the potential to kill the tobacco industry,” says TIMB in its latest article published on its website.
US$57 million is an awful lot of money that cannot be taken so lightly that TIMB has not even acted yet to bring culprits to book. It is quite puzzling that the tobacco industry regulator appears to be still casually mulling of taking action to curb the vice, yet those who pilfered this huge amount of money are freely roaming our land.
We would have thought that TIMB should have alerted the police or the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission to pounce on the suspected companies and individuals involved in this scam.
Side marketing has been happening for many years right under TIMB’s nose and it perplexes to imagine that the regulator has been in such deep slumber that it has only woken up this year to realise that its very own existence is now seriously under threat from tobacco side marketers.
TIMB appears to be still yawning about this matter, which we feel requires prompt and drastic action because talk is cheap when so many millions of precious foreign currency is being siphoned from right under our very noses.
If TIMB is actually aware that some unscrupulous licensed contractors are illegally allocating grower numbers commonly known as a company “grower number” and payments are being paid into bank accounts linked to the crooked contractors, why then is it taking this long for the scourge to be stopped?
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Are these nefarious tobacco sacred cows who TIMB has little to no power to confront and have them arrested?
TIMB already has a very clear starting point. Evidence abounds of side marketing and paper trails of the vice are imprinted all over like gumboot footprints in the mud in the form of contracts between tobacco farmers and contracting firms, the tobacco delivered to the contractors and the amounts paid out to the farmers.
It then disorientates when no action is being taken immediately to recover or at least rein in the culprits before they devise new schemes to outwit the contract tobacco marketing system. If culprits are identified and nabbed now, plugging the loopholes being used by the side buyers would be easier.
Plugging the loopholes while these culprits are still at large will be a tough exercise for TIMB because criminals are known to be always ahead of the law, which is why arresting them is better than try to stop them through laws and other mechanisms.
TIMB must act sooner rather than later.
