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Tobacco Standard … GNBS still to submit document to Tourism Ministry

Dec 29, 2009 News

Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, has confirmed that the controversial tobacco standard is indeed at the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) and not at the Ministry of Tourism Industry and Commerce.
This has now cleared the air on the location of the tobacco standard, given the fact that Project Officer of the Guyana Chest Society, Eshwar Raghunath, had claimed that the standard was forwarded from the GNBS to the Tourism Ministry.
But when contacted yesterday for a clarification on the issue, Minister Ramsammy explained to Kaieteur News that when the standard was developed and sent to the GNBS, the Tobacco Council made a recommendation in relation to the standard, and as such it had to be further examined by the GNBS.
According to the Health Minister, the GNBS will have to submit the complete document to the Tourism Ministry which will then take it to cabinet for its approval. However, Minister Ramsammy could not say when this will be done.
The Project Officer of the Guyana Chest Society Raghunath had refuted statements made by the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS), which had recently stated that the controversial tobacco standard was not at the Tourism Ministry, but rather it was still at the GNBS.
Raghunath, when contacted for his comments on this issue had said he is not aware that the standard was still at the GNBS. As a matter of fact, the technical officers from the office of the director of the GNBS informed him (Raghunath) that the standard was forwarded to the Ministry of Tourism Industry and Commerce.
According to the Project Officer, he has a correspondence from the Tourism Ministry explaining that the Ministry will give the Private Sector Commission another chance at expressing their comments and suggestions about the standard.
Raghunath also noted that officials from the Ministry even went as far as taking the document to the Permanent Secretary of the Tourism Ministry in order to ‘speed up’ the process.
On Thursday last, the Public Relations Officer of the GNBS, Lloyd David, in a press statement to the media noted that the tobacco standard was not at the Tourism Ministry and explained that the GNBS is still examining the documents under its standard development process.
In 2005, Guyana signed onto the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), where there are several articles within that treaty that addresses the control of tobacco as well as its demand and supply.
Since then, Governments had three years to implement the various principles of the treaty but Guyana is in breach of Article 11, which deals specifically with the packaging and labeling of tobacco products.
This article demands that Governments implement pictorial health warnings on both sides of cigarette packages taking up a space of 50 per cent on each surface but to date, this is still to be done in Guyana.

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