Zanzibar Govt vows to control clove smuggling

Zanzibar. Zanzibar government has vowed to step up security in every corner of the Pemba Island to stem widespread smuggling of cloves, whose harvesting season is around the corner.

The Zanzibar minister for Trade, Industry and Marketing, ambassador Amina Salum Ali, made the statement in the House of Representatives during a debate on the Clove Development Bill.

She said the crop produce substantial percentage of government revenue and that in the next harvesting season the government was going to use a system akin to that of football stadiums, where all gates for entering and going out of Pemba would be monitored closely to ensure nothing was brought in or taken out without the government knowledge.

She said in the past, during the crop harvesting season, it was normal for smugglers to use various gateways to smuggle cloves, adding that others were using that loophole to bring in cloves of low quality from outside Zanzibar.

Such a situation, she said, had for long made the government lose a lot of revenue while the status of Zanzibar’s cloves took a hit.

For his part, the Shaurimoyo Representative, Mr Hamza Hassan Juma, said the government should take such stern measures as a way of controlling leakage of revenue.