TC worrisome with nesting, says it affects integrity of tobacco leaf
Tobacco Commission, (TC) says this year nesting has worsening comparing with other growing season with 5080 bales of tobacco confiscated due to the malpractice as this affects integrity of tobacco in the country.
Nesting is the concealment of stems, scraps, loose leaf or any object within a bale to deceive a buyer on quality or quantity.
During a media visit at TAMA farmers trust offices as well as other tobacco buying company factories at Kanengo in Lilongwe where rehandling of confiscated tobacco bales is done, it has been discovered that the situation is at high risk which authorities say it might affect the confidence of the country’s tobacco leaf at international market.
Telephorus Chingwenembe TC spokesperson admitted that the malpractice becomes more costly and expensive to the tobacco buying companies as they spent huge money only to find that there is more tobacco bales to be nested and measures are put in place to eradicate the malpractice.
“We have hard nesting in the recent years but this year we can say it’s worse, we are talking of 5080 bales that have been nested so it’s a serious problem that we are dealing with,” he said.
He further said the rehandling process is at growers cost and the money realized will be in TC custody pending other guidelines on nesting processes for this year.
Chingwenembe also highlighted that they will ensure that they use all necessary provisions provided by the laws to deal with the malpractice as they believe that this will deter other would-be offenders from doing the same practice.
Among all auction floors in the country Lilongwe has the highest figure of nested bales ranging at 2460 followed by Kasungu with 1481 bales as well as 842 and 297 from Mzuzu and Limbe auction floors respectively.
At the official closing of this year’s tobacco selling season the country had realized 133 million kilograms of tobacco valued at $396 million dollars with an average price of $2.89 per kilogram.
