Tea Ordinance, 1959

This 1959 ordinance set up the framework for regulating Pakistan's tea industry, mainly through the Pakistan Tea Board and a related Tea Development Committee, and by imposing a cess (a small tax) on tea production to fund the industry's development. Section 3 constitutes the Board, made up of a government-appointed Chairman, elected representatives of tea growers' and traders' associations, government nominees with tea or agricultural expertise, a representative elected by tea garden labour unions, and a Commerce Ministry official — and confirms the Board is a body corporate that can own property and sue or be sued.

Section 4 gives the Board its functions: regulating and promoting tea cultivation and export, organising research into tea cultivation and the industry, regulating tea sales, collecting statistics from growers and dealers, setting grading standards, and providing training in tea tasting, plus whatever other tasks the Federal Government directs. Section 5 keeps the Board under the Federal Government's overall superintendence, meaning the government can cancel, suspend, or modify any Board action and inspect its records.

Section 6 authorises a cess on all tea produced in Pakistan, originally capped at two rupees and eight annas per hundred pounds of tea, with the actual rate set by the Federal Government through official notification. Section 7 directs that the proceeds go to the Board to fund its work, including contributions to international tea organisations.

Chapter IV (Sections 13A to 19A) gives the government tools to control tea cultivation and exports directly if needed — including power to direct compulsory expansion of tea growing, allocate and distribute export quotas, run export auctions, register export contracts, and, in Section 19, prohibit the transport, storage, or sale of tea in certain circumstances.

Section 23 sets penalties for offences under the ordinance, and Section 24 separately punishes making false statements or keeping double sets of records with up to three years' imprisonment, a fine, or both. Section 27 allows a specially empowered Magistrate to impose fines above the normal one-thousand-rupee limit that would otherwise apply under the Code of Criminal Procedure. This is an old ordinance from 1959 that the extract shows has been amended repeatedly (in 1960, 1962, 1965, and 1975, among others), including changes to the Board's exact composition and the meaning of "Central Government" being updated to "Federal Government" — so current figures like the cess rate should be checked against the up-to-date text.