Parliament’s Health Portfolio Committee is going ahead with processing the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill despite concerns about the lack of consultation with Nedlac (the National Economic Development and Labour Council).
The proposal is to ban smoking and vaping in public spaces, and for cigarettes and vapes to be sold in plain packaging. The Bill will also prohibit the advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco-related products and recommends that health warnings and other information be displayed on all packaging.
Committee chair Sibongiseni Dhlomo said he had received the go-ahead from Nedlac’s director who had indicated Nedlac would like to engage the committee on the Bill at a later stage, reports BusinessLIVE.
Parliament’s legal advisers also gave the committee the green light at a meeting, with legal adviser Sueanne Isaac saying that in view of the department’s assurances given to the committee the week before last, she believed it had complied with the Nedlac Act.
Nedlac could also consider the Bill on its own initiative and the Ccmmittee could also raise issues with Nedlac during its processing, she added.
Cosatu’s parliamentary co-ordinator Matthew Parks said they supported the Bill as progressive but that the federation and Nedlac itself had repeatedly asked for the Bill to be sent to Nedlac for deliberation.
He criticised the Health Department's “lackadaisical approach” to consulting with Nedlac.
Nedlac includes representatives of business, government and labour. The Nedlac Act says the body must consider policies and legislation with socio-economic implications and submit a report to Parliament on draft Bills before MPs begin their deliberations.
A week ago, Business Unity SA (Busa) had sent a letter to the committee asking it to instruct the Health Department to send the Bill back to Nedlac for “a comprehensive review”.
The cepartment’s failure to honour its commitments to bring the Bill to Nedlac contravened legal requirements and eroded trust in the legislative process, said Lunga Maloyi, Busa’s executive director for fiscal and economic policy.
Maloyi added that Busa had also written to Nedlac and was awaiting the outcome of the two communications. He said it was premature to speculate on whether business would take the matter to court.
However, Jeanette Hunter, the Health Department’s deputy director-general for primary healthcare, assured the committee that the department had met the requirements of the Nedlac Act – and that it had twice consulted Nedlac on the Bill.
It had first presented it to Nedlac in a virtual meeting on 20 October 2021, when the chair had allowed all participants to ask questions and make comments, she added.
“The business representatives did not ask any questions but instead requested the formation of a task team to discuss amendments to the Bill clause by clause. It was our expectation that Nedlac would do this and submit their comments,” Hunter said.
The Health Department met Nedlac again on 28 July 2022, facilitated by the Department of Trade, Industry & Competition, and at that meeting, Nedlac again asked that a task team be formed, and once again, the Health Department’s expectation was that Nedlac would do so and submit its comments, she said.
But Parks disagreed with Hunter’s depiction of the department’s interaction with Nedlac. “There have been no meetings between Nedlac and the Health Department. There was one presentation at Nedlac: they came for an hour. We asked them to come back for a chapter-by-chapter engagement. They never came back to us, despite us asking them to do so (repeatedly),” he told Business Day.
Isaac said the public hearings held by the dommittee in the previous Parliament were legally valid.
Public hearings on the Bill started in August 2023 and people in seven of the nine provinces had been given a chance to air their views. The meetings paused before the election, so public hearings in KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape still have to be held.
BusinessLIVE article – Health committee to go ahead with processing tobacco bill (Restricted access)
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