During the opening of this year’s tobacco Marketing season at Kanengo Auction Floors, Lazarus Chakwera ordered the Ministry of Agriculture and Tobacco Control  Commission (TCC) to find more Tobacco buyers, a move that will increase competition and deal with monopoly amongst the few existing Tobacco buyers.

“The Ministry of Agriculture should work with the Tobacco Commission on ways of attracting more buyers beyond the nine we currently have.” said Chakwera, “That way there is more competition and less monopoly among buyers, because monopoly is one of the factors that contributes to the disempowerment of the farmers power.”

On the other hand, following the resistance towards the Tobacco Industry Act, the Tobacco Commission has called for the review of the law which was implemented not more than a year ago. The recently appointed TC chief executive officer Joseph Chidanti Malunga said the review of the Act will help to align  issues, as the Act has seen farmers dragging the Commission to court over owning 75% of surplus remaining tobacco after the market. “As a commission, we are in the process of reviewing the Act, we are soliciting comments from stakeholders, we want to relook at the law and once we complete compiling the comments we will send them to the government.” said Malunga.