Public Health on Top

Prerona Foundation, a not-for-profit organization run by British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB), has recently launched a joint program titled “Amra Shikhi, Amra Pari” (We Learn and We Can), after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with PFDA Vocational Training Centre to create sustainable livelihood generation opportunities for differently-abled individuals and also to contribute to the public health of the country. Under the program, the differently-abled individuals will learn how to make facial masks in order to help in the fight against Covid-19 and also to support themselves. The virtual launching event of this initiative was heavily publicized in both mainstream and social media. A total of 14 reports on different media outlets and also sponsored Facebook posts were published. The Foundation also organized a virtual discussion meeting with a national daily where government high officials and BATB representatives attended. Safeguarding public health by creating opportunities for the differently-abled individuals by giving them mask-making training is nothing but a carefully-crafted plan of BATB. The main purpose of this initiative is to overcome the company’s grave reputational risk. One cannot but notice that tobacco, the sole product of BATB, is one of the vital factors behind the acceleration of Covid-19 pandemic. In Bangladesh, tobacco claims 126.000 lives a year. Prerona Foundation claims that its “preliminary ambition is to assist the government by extending full cooperation to accelerate the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.”

Like previous years, BATB has made its donation this year to the “Bangladesh Labor Welfare Foundation” (BLWF), a fund under the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MoLE). The true intention behind such donation is to coax the government into grant its exemption from mandatory labor rights, determined by the law. It should be noted that, between 2014 and 2017, through 05 different government orders, BATB was allowed to make its workforce work for additional hours and was granted other exemptions from different articles of Labor Law 2006. Such fake corporate social responsibility activities of tobacco companies should be stopped immediately by amending tobacco control law in line with FCTC.