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| December 10, 2006 | Sunday | Ziqa'ad 18, 1427 |
Parliament House gets smoking lounge
ISLAMABAD, Dec 9: As the capital administration is gearing up to make smoking in public areas an offence, a nice cozy and quiet lounge is ready for the lawmakers in the Parliament House to think while smoking over strategies for the upcoming general elections.
A specially-designated lounge for the smokers has been set up in the Parliament House to add the number of such corners in the country to five. All the three international airports— Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi—have designated smoking areas in addition to similar places in the Evacuee Trust building in Islamabad and now the Parliament House. The recent addition in the parliament is the proud gift of Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC) for the lawmakers.
“This is just a litmus test and if accepted the company may consider sponsoring more lounges in other important places as well,” said a senior representative of the tobacco company when asked to comment on the newly constructed smoking area in the Parliament House.
He, however, hastened to add that the lounge was in fact a small room with a television set and comfy sofas to keep the politicians abreast of important developments in the world. After the promulgation of Prohibition of Smoking Ordinance 2002, stickers with a warning not to smoke were affixed in almost all the government offices including the Parliament House to persuade the smokers to quit smoking.
The initiative to build separate smoking corners by none other than the tobacco industry is apparently aimed at safeguarding the interests of the non-smokers but more importantly is also an admission to the fact that second hand smoke is injurious to health.
Segregating smoking places in the Parliament House to please the parliamentarians seems to be an intelligent move by the tobacco industry to anticipate tobacco regulations by proactively engaging them for a future balance laws.
Already the anti-smoking law has a very little effect in the society which is evident from the fact that cigarettes are still being sold in close proximity of education institutions while Section 9 of the ordinance prohibits the sale of tobacco and tobacco products especially to minors within 50 meters of an education institution.
Very recently the Deputy Commissioner Islamabad had formally directed the traffic police to ensure complete ban on smoking in the public service transport.
The other day Health Minister Muhammad Nasir Khan had announced that the federal government was considering enhancing taxes on the tobacco industry without realising that in such event the industry would simply pass the burden on the consumers.
Already the industry was acting as a collecting agent of taxes for the government. Reportedly the government earns approximately Rs38.5 billion each year from the tobacco industry. The amount does not include the cess that the provinces are charging on tobacco production.
The government is also planning to impose a complete ban on smoking on public places by March 2007 for which guidelines have already been sent to all the provincial health ministries to implement smoking ordinances. By then the smoking would also be banned on national and international flights, educations institutes, government offices, public places, restaurants and hotels.
Total cigarette production in Pakistan is about 71 billion sticks a year, of which the legal cigarette production in Pakistan is approximately 77 per cent.
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