SWABI, Nov 22: The tobacco companies have slashed the quota by  36.98 per cent for the year 2003, and asked the cultivators to stop growing more tobacco, officials of tobacco companies told Dawn here on Thursday.

Pakistan Tobacco Board (PTB), Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC) and Lakson Tobacco Company (LTC) said the tobacco growers had been  advised to cultivate alternative crops as major as well as small  purchasers had cut down their respective quotas due to the lack of  export opportunities and a drop in cigarette sale.

This is the second time that tobacco companies have declined to purchase surplus tobacco from the growers. In the year 2001 the quota was lowered by 47 per cent, but the companies had bought the surplus tobacco nonetheless.

In the last three years, the officials said, the buyers had purchased over 40 million kg surplus tobacco, which had become burden over them, exhausting the financial capabilities of the purchasers to buy tobacco in June 2003.

They said like the past three years workshop would be held jointly by the companies and PTB to educate the people about the requirements of the companies and their weak financial position.

The farmers have been encouraged to grow vegetables, sugarcane, wheat, beet, etc, which can be grown by the tobacco growers instead of tobacco in their respective fields and they have to plan the tobacco production for the year 2003 according to the requirements of the companies.

They said as the requirement quota had been reduced the agreements with some growers would also be axed, but those who upheld the companies guidelines in the 2002 season would be able to easily renew their agreements.

They appealed to the growers to execute agreements with the tobacco companies of their choice and those who failed to secure agreements must give up the cultivation of tobacco to avoid purchasers-growers confrontation during the marketing season like the past few years.

The growers, they said, were advised to cultivate G-399 tobacco verities and other kind of Virginia tobacco passed by the companies and must avoid from cultivating unauthorized kind of tobacco.

PTC officials claimed they had started the registration of tobacco “Bhattas” across the district and for achieving this purpose the company’s representatives had been visiting all tobacco growing localities.

The purpose of the visits, they said, was to execute agreements with only genuine and deserving growers as the tobacco growers had complained in the last few years that the companies had provided agreements to the tobacco businessmen instead of real growers.

The business community, they said, had their own quota according to the tobacco marketing law-MLO-487 and the companies had purchased tobacco from them according to the prescribed rules.

When contacted the tobacco growers castigated the companies for slashing their quota and demanded the tobacco should be made an exportable commodity as both the federal and the provincial governments had pledged on a number occasions.

They alleged that each year the companies raised the bogey of surplus tobacco and then purchased the crop from the growers on low prices. Through this strategy, they said, the purchasers had exploited the growers and pocketed billion of rupees at the cost of the peasants.

They demanded that the tobacco’s future should be protected by the government and it should be exported like cotton and rice because it is the only cash crop with which the livelihood of thousand of families linked and the government collects Rs18 billion through different taxes on tobacco each year.