From a massive work force of 25,000 in the 70s, the textile industry can now boast of only about 1,700 workers, Business Finder can confirm.
They are made up of 300 employees from Printex, 600 from Tex Style Ghana Limited formerly GTP and 800 from the Akosombo Textiles Limited. Ghana Textile Manufacturing Company, Juapong Textile Limited and others have all collapsed.
General Secretary of the Ghana Federation of Labour, Abraham Koomson told this paper that but for the timely intervention of the anti-piracy taskforce set up by government to check and destroy the counterfeit products as well as arrest the perpetrators the industry will have collapsed by now.
However, he explained that the health of the industry is not too good.
“It is not too good even though we appreciate the efforts government has been doing. “The situation is like a sick person who has gone into coma so we try and revive. We are praying to revive the industry though the situation is 50/50.”
According to him, though the industry is left with few workers it was still experiencing job losses.
“ATL wants to offload but its problem is to raise funds and pay the workers. The workers under the condition of service must be paid 3 months of basic pay multiply by the number of years served”, Mr. Koomson explained.
According to him, ATL which he described as a distress company has workers who are currently home but are being paid every month. He noted that ATL cannot match up the inferior textile products from China and other Asian countries.
“ATL is a fully integrated textile firm that does spinning and weaving. Spinning and weaving department employs about 65 percent of the workers but the cost is too high. GTP and Printex are still surviving because they have closed down their spinning and weaving departments and importing labour.”
Explaining further, Mr. Koomson said the textile firms are making huge losses and this year could be worse.
With regard to the future, Mr. Koomson said there is some hope for the textile industry as the task force has been doing its best to revive the industry to some extent.
This year, the task force has confiscated more than 5,000 pieces of pirated textiles from traders in various markets across the country.
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