Death Marketing-1

BATB deriving favors in return for donations’

British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB) has recently donated a handsome amount of money to the Bangladesh Labor Welfare Foundation, a body under the Ministry of Labor and Employment. In fact, BATB makes such donations every year in order to create a ‘reputation’ and derive a number of favors from the government. BATB’s donations often get widespread media focus and form a ‘humane’ image of the company as if it exists not to sell tobacco but to take welfare programs for workers. The reality is, in return of its donations to BLWF, BATB has been deriving anti-Labor interest favors from the Ministry of Labor and Employment for years. From 2014 to 2017, five circulars from the Ministry exempted BATB (table 1) from obeying Section 06, 09, 100, 102, 104, 105 and 114 (1) of the Bangladesh Labor Act, 2006 under certain conditions, under the disguise of an incomprehensible and mysterious ‘Public Interest’. And exploiting the flexibility, BATB has made daily working hours to 10 hours in a day instead of eight (08) hours and has set weekly holiday to one day instead of one and a half day. These facilities provided to a tobacco company violates FCTC Article 5.3 Guideline 7.1 as it prevents the govt. from giving privileges or benefits to the tobacco industry for running their business.