Complaint filed over JTI’s planned plant in Taiwan

A group of anti-tobacco activists in Taiwan filed a complaint on Monday accusing three cabinet agencies of dereliction of duty and legal violations after they gave the go-ahead or failed to object to the building of a factory by an international tobacco company, according to a Focus Taiwan News Channel report.

The complaint was filed with the Control Yuan, which is the government body that investigates civil servants and public agencies over accusations of improper behavior.

The John Tung Foundation CEO, Yau Sea-wain, the Consumers’ Foundation vice chairman, Yu Kai-hsiung, and two celebrity volunteers filed the accusations against the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Health Promotion Administration.

The activists called on the Control Yuan to stop the construction by Japan Tobacco International of a factory in the Tainan Technology Industrial Park in southern Taiwan.

Citing the Statute for Investment by Foreign Nationals, Yau said the regulations prohibited foreign interests from investing in sectors that were harmful to people’s health.

The MOEA, however, has classified the tobacco manufacturing sector as an industry in which foreign and expatriate investors are ‘restricted’ from investing, not ‘prohibited from investing.

Health authorities were accused of failing to alert the MOEA as it reviewed the JTI investment application in 2013 that Taiwan observes the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control of the World Health Organization, Yau said.

Under the convention, tobacco is defined as a lethal product and therefore WHO member-governments are restrained from providing preferential treatment to the establishment of new tobacco companies or an expansion of the industry.