Textile industry faces gloom future

Spread lead
02-02-10

PLAYERS in the local textile manufacturing business have warned that the closure of the Akosombo Textiles Limited (ATL), which was announced yesterday, can signal the final demise of the industry in the country.
They said with the closure of ATL, a similar fate awaits Printex and Ghana Textiles Printing (GTP) Limited, the only survivors in the local industry, if immediate action is not taken by policy makers to salvage the situation.
Citing shortage of raw materials, the management of ATL yesterday announced the closure of the largest textile manufacturer in the country and asked the 1,600 workers to go home.
Notice to that effect had earlier been put up by the management of the company last Saturday, indicating that due to the shortage of cotton and black oil, production had ceased and the workers had to go home.
It said workers who had to provide essential services would be duly notified.
But the General Secretary of the Ghana Federation of Labour (GFL), Mr Abraham Koomson, has described the directive as being “borne out of desperation” because for some time now ATL had run out of raw materials for the manufacture of textiles and was engaged in supplies, hence the closure.
He said the management of ATL had subsequently apologised and assured the workers that the closure was temporary, while workers would be better engaged in all such initiatives in the future.
Mr Koomson said the flooding of the country with cheap textiles and the high cost of production, making textiles produced in the country uncompetitive on the local market, resulting in unfair competition, could bring about the imminent closure of Printex and GTP if appropriate action was not taken now.
He said it would also mean the laying off of about 3,000 workers in the sector, of which 1,600 were currently at home.
Mr Koomson said the importation of cheap textiles and the high cost of production had been long-standing issues that needed the commitment of the political leadership to deal with now.
He said all seized textile materials smuggled into the country should either be burnt or destroyed through other processes to prevent them from finding their way onto the local market to deter people from continuing to engage in smuggling, since they had led to the collapse of textile companies and made the state lose billions of cedis.
“These cheap smuggled textiles with the designs of local textile companies must be destroyed when impounded because they are killing the local industry. This must not be allowed to go on; after all, countries such as Cote d’Ivoire and Tanzania have adopted similar measures to protect their local industries,” Mr Koomson said in an interview with the Daily Graphic.
He said, for instance, that from a total workforce of 25,000, the industry now had 3,000 workers and attributed the problem to the influx of cheap textiles onto the local market.
In addition, he said Ghana lost heavily (¢300 billion) in 2002-2003 as a result of the smuggling of textiles into the country.
He said in March last year Tanzania destroyed counterfeit and smuggled goods worth more than $224,000, while the Sharjah municipality in the United Arab Emirates destroyed 30,000 counterfeit auto parts last year following raids on warehouses, with more than 28,000 counterfeit goods, made up of CDs, among others, being destroyed in Australia.
Mr Koomson said seized materials should not be sold or auctioned in any way on the Ghanaian market, noting that once that was done, it would legitimise the illegal trade.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of the local union at ATL, Mr Gustav Darkoh, when contacted, said management had met with executives of the union and assured them that production would resume as soon as the consignment of raw materials were received.
He said workers were hopeful that they would be recalled soon.
Meanwhile, most of them did not report for work on Monday because of the notice.