TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Widyastuti Soerojo, the coordinator of Health Warning Development on Cigarette Packages of the University of Indonesia’s Public Health Faculty, said the government was still half-hearted in preparing the ratification of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. She added the government refrained from taking stern actions in ruling cigarette circulation in the community.
“It is not that the government does not know, but it does not dare and lacks the political will to decide whether it must side with the interests of the people or the capitalists,” she told a workshop themed FCTC and the Nation’s Defense in the area of Kuningan, Jakarta, on Monday, October 21, 2013.
According to Widyastuti, the government was reluctant in ratifying the FCTC on concern it would be detrimental to the domestic cigarette industries and inflict losses on tobacco farmers. She said the concern had not been proven to date as nations ratifying the FCTC did not see any decrease in their tobacco production.
She took for example that Chinese tobacco production rose from 38 percent in 2002 to 42.8 percent in 2010 from the total world’s tobacco production. The FAO recorded Chinese tobacco production reached 2.8 million tons.
The same went for Brazil, she added, whose tobacco production increased by 10.3 percent to 10.9 percent and India from 9.1 percent to 10.6 percent. “So it is not true that the ratification will injure tobacco farmers. It is just a political pretext to avoid the ratification of the FCTC.
IRA GUSLINA SUFA
