Despite improved security surveillance in the past three-years, clove smuggling remains a big challenge in the islands, members of the Zanzibar House of Representatives were informed.
“Clove smuggling is still a problem. We have to work together to address it,” Mr Salmin Awadhi Salmin (CCM – Magomeni) said in the House when briefing legislators about fact-finding visits by the House committee on Finance, Trade and Agriculture.
He advised the government to strengthen relations with farmers and local people so that they can help expose clove smugglers whose illegal activities deny the State of revenue.
Salmin informed authorities that although the government has increased clove prices since 2010, farmers are discouraged by the unethical conduct by some ZSTC officers who take remaining cloves after weighing, without farmers consent.
Zanzibar State Trade Corporation (ZSTC) is the sole buyer of the cloves and the House of Representatives recently approved a new clove law aiming at protecting the crop.
Meanwhile the Minister for Finance, Mr Omar Yussuf Mzee, said the government has vowed to end fuel smuggling in the Islands, asking members of the public to help in revealing the culprits.
He informed the House that the ongoing efforts to control oil smuggling in the islands include increased surveillance by security agents and Zanzibar Revenue Board (ZRB) officers and collaboration with authorities in Mombasa, Kenya to help identify dealers in illegal importation of fuel to Zanzibar.
By ISSA YUSSUF, Tanzania Daily News
