Tobacco Control

1. Project Title: Tobacco Control for Sustainable and Healthy Cities in Bangladesh

2. Duration of Project:  18 months (May 2025-October 2026)

3. Project outreach (Population i.e. number of people that will be directly affected by the project):

Directly affected: 865,554

Indirectly affected: 4-5 million

The population of municipality in Bangladesh is approximately based on 2022 data. This is different from the larger Patuakhali District, which has a total population of 1,727,254. 

4. Program Area and strategy: Implementation of Tobacco Advertizing Promotion and Sponsorship (TAPS) ban provision in Tobacco Control Acts, facilitation of enforcement of tobacco control legislation and police, institutional capacity development for tobacco control and tobacco industry monitoring

5. Problem Statement: Grambangla Unnayan Committee (GUC) has been implementing tobacco control programmes in Bangladesh since 2018. In the project areas of GUC, online surveillance data showed that “NO incidences of tobacco advertisement materials” were found at 2.6%, 31.3% and 42.0% of all the POS in 2019, 2023, and 2025 respectively (number of tobacco advertisement free POS increased remarkably because of integrated interventions). Moreover, the average number of advertisement materials per POS was 3.2, 1.4, and 0.79 in 2019, 2023, and 2025, respectively. Despite mobile court operations, fines and removal of 12,000 tobacco advertisements materials by the sanitary inspectors and municipal revenue officers, the industry continues their efforts to increase sales of tobacco through deceptive approaches especially through TAPS ban violation and marketing mechanism. Still, we need to keep continue our efforts to increase compliance with tobacco control laws to make Bangladesh tobacco free. Therefore, TFC, LGIs, NTCC, NILG, NGOs and CBOs need to continue their efforts to reduce tobacco use near ‘Zero’ percent of total population.

GUC has been implementing tobacco control programmes in Barishal division. During its previous initiatives, Grambangla facilitated enforcing TAPS’s provision of tobacco control laws. Tobacco industries continuously advertise their products at the POSs and performe sales activities. Tobacco Control Task Force Committees are not conducting meetings at regular basis as they have less priority issues about tobacco control. In this context, GUC needs to work on enforcement of tobacco control laws, especially on TAPS ban issues, licensing of POSs with Local Government Institutions and activating task force committees.

6. Project Summary: Grambangla is implementing this project during the period of May 2025- October 2026 with the purpose of tobacco control for making sustainable and healthy cities in Bangladesh. This project supports institutionalizing of a system and capacity building of enforcing agencies for implementation and monitoring of the tobacco control laws and guidelines to reduce TAPS ban violation and to increase tobacco vendor licensing. The specific objectives of the project are as follows:

Objective 1: Support the divisional and district task force to advance institutionalization and implement the government’s tobacco control programs

Objective-2: Build capacity of task force members and other key stakeholders, including nodal officers of different concerned departments

Objective-3: Create the model districts ensuring high compliance with tobacco control laws’ smokefree and TAPS provisions

Objective-4: Assist the local government institutions in advancing the implementation of tobacco control guidelines

Objective-5: To support Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) and National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB)  in development of Tobacco Free Educational Institution guideline and institutionalization of its monitoring and reporting mechanism

Grambangla is implement the project along with its 18 local NGO partners (non-financial agreement), 18 municipality/Local Government Institutions (LGIs) and 18 Task Force Committees for Tobacco Control, 18 Civil Society Action Committees and 36 local schools and colleges.

8. Key deliverables: Among the components of MPOWER measures, this project is working for “Warn” and “Enforce”. This project warns about the dangers of tobacco through health warnings on packaging, public health campaigns, and education programs and facilitate enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship to limit the appeal and reach of tobacco products. 

Key deliverables of the project are as follows:

  1. Ninety (90) Authorized Officers are being equipped with specific role and action plan to enforce tobacco control laws at 18 municipalities
    1. Five municipalities are being established as model municipality
    1. 10 Municipalities, 20 schools and 10 Upazila Health Complexes and 4 District are being declared and maintained model tobacco free zone
    1. 18 municipalities and 6 District Councils are being allocated funds to implement tobacco control activities.
    1. Smoke free signage are being ensured all public places and transport.
    1. All TAPS are being removed from the POS.
    1. All tobacco vendors are in the process of obtaining a license for tobacco sales in accordance with LGI TC guidelines.
  • Strengthening tobacco control law implementation
    • An authorized WhatsApp group are being created for each working area to coordinate efforts among law enforcement officials.
    • TC Taskforce meetings conducted as per NTCC guidelines.
  • More than 18,000 tobacco advertisement materials are being removed from POS
  • 7,000 POS owners are in the process of complying with tobacco control laws especially with TAPS ban provisions
  • TAPS ban violations at the POSs are being decreased by 30% of the total TAPS ban violations
  • BDT.500,000 are being fined for violation of tobacco control laws by the facilitated mobile courts
  • 100,000 people are being reached with social media contents on tobacco
  • A Tobacco Free Educational Institution guideline is being developed in collaboration with Ministry of Education, Ministry of Heatlh and Family Welfare, National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) and University
  • Around 2000 new POS are being received license for tobacco selling
  • About 10,000 POS are being brought under digital surveillance system and will be monitored to see the violations of tobacco industry at POS

9. Stakeholders of the project: The stakeholders of the project are as follows:

  • NTCC: They will cooperate GUC to implement this project through activating TFCs
  • Department of Local Government will extend its cooperation to implement LGI TC guideline.
  • NILG will build capacity of Municipalities.
  • 18 Local Government Institutions: (Barisal City Corporation and 17 selected Municipalities (Agailjhara, Banaripara, Jhalokathi, Kathalia, Nalchity, Pirojpur, Nazirpur, Nesarabad, Patuakhali, Rangabali, Kuakata, Borguna, Taltali, Betagi, Bhola, Daulatkhan, Lalmohan) LGIs will participate to implement tobacco control guideline especially tobacco vendor licensing
  • 18 local NGO partners: GUC will work with the 18 local partner NGOs to work with TFCs and municipalities.
  • 18 Tobacco Control TFCs Committees will support for operating mobile courts.
  • Authorized Officers (Sanitary Inspectors, Sub-Inspector of Police etc.) will be facilitated to enforce TC Laws
  • 18 Civil Society Action Committees will be actively involved as `Watchdog’ to monitor TAPS ban violation.
  • 18 committees of ‘Youth for Sustainable Development in Bangladesh’ will mobilize young people and students.

10. Project Goal and Objectives

Goal: Capacity development and activating local government institutions and enforcement agencies to implement tobacco control laws and LGI guideline towards creating sustainable and healthy cities in Bangladesh.

Specific Objectives: Specific objectives of the project are as follows:

Objective 1: Support the divisional and district task force to advance institutionalization and implement the government’s tobacco control programs

Objective-2: Build capacity of task force members and other key stakeholders, including nodal officers of different concerned departments

Objective-3: Create the model districts ensuring high compliance with tobacco control laws’ smokefree and TAPS provisions

Objective-4: Assist the local government institutions in advancing the implementation of tobacco control guidelines

Objective-5: To support Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) and National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB)  in development of Tobacco Free Educational Institution guideline and institutionalization of its monitoring and reporting mechanism