Tobacco Deliveries Stopped
07/04/2011 15:45:00
HARARE, April 7, 2011 – TOBACCO deliveries to the prestigious Tobacco Sales
Floors (TSF) have been stopped with immediate effect, Radio VOP can reveal.
A spokesman from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) said they
had been closed due to “severe congestion at the tobacco auction floors”.
He said all new tobacco deliveries to the auction floors had been suspended
until further notice.
“Growers should note that the auction floors will not accept any tobacco
that has not been booked for the sale in advance and that such tobacco will
be turned away from the delivery queues,” he said in an interview.
The move comes amid reports that some wives of tobacco farmers were begining
to sleep outside the TSF waiting to sell their product in Harare.
Prostitution was said to be rife outside the TSF as women of the night
pounced on their male partners, leaving condoms scattered around the selling
venue at night.
The spokesman said growers were free to book and to deliver on a “first-come
first-served” basis to a floor of their choice.
“The practice of ‘deliver today and sell tomorrow’ will apply at all auction
floors,” he said.
“Growers should only engage the services of transporters registered with
TIMB and whose payment is done through the Central Stop Order System.”
He said to make sales bookings, growers could call the auction floor of
their choice.
Bookings at the TSF are from 6:00 am until 6:00 pm Mondays to Fridays and
6:00 am until 12 noon on Saturdays.
Once the third largest producer of flue-cured tobacco, Zimbabwe’s production
has dwindled drammatically courtesy of President Robert Mugabe’s
controversial land resettlement programme begun in 2000.