Tobacco Industry Displays Disregard for Factory Worker Health
COVID-19 Related Deaths At Tobacco Factory In Indonesia Are Latest Example of Prioritizing Profits Over Workers. Editor, Asian Tribune. 11 May 2020. http://www.asiantribune.com/node/94003The Global tobacco industry watchdog STOP – Stopping Tobacco Organizations and Products, and the US Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) are urging preventive action following a rash of reports that tobacco industry practices in their factories may be putting workers at risk for COVID – 19.
Several workers have died and many more have been diagnosed with Covid-19 in a tobacco factory in Rungkut district of Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia. STOP partner Bungon Ritthiphakdee, Executive Director of the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), expressed deep concern: “Instead of doing everything they can to protect workers amid the pandemic, the tobacco industry may be putting them at more risk.” This story notes that even before COVID-19, tobacco companies have been exposed for appalling examples of labor abuse in Malawi, Kazakhstan and Nigeria.
“By putting their employees and, by extension the rest of the population, at greater risk from COVID – 19, the tobacco industry demonstrates once again its complete disregard for health, for life and for human rights. And all to ensure the supply of a product that kills when used exactly as the industry intends,” said Laurent Huber, Executive Director, US Action on Smoking and Health.
The World Health Organization urges governments and businesses to take measures to protect workers from the highly contagious coronavirus which has now infected over 4 million persons worldwide and killed over a quarter million persons. Closing crowded factories is warranted until testing can be implemented with increased precautions against the spread of the Covid-19 viral disease. The tobacco industry should be especially concerned for their workers since deaths in tobacco factories only spotlight how smoking results in more severe cases of and deaths for those hospitalized with Covid-19.
Stephen Hamann
by Stephen Hamann
