The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies, says paying workers low wages in the textile sector won’t make it more competitive and desirable in advancing manufacturing in the country. Speaking at the Prestige Clothing Factory, which is the manufacturing arm of Foschini in Cape Town, earlier this week, Davies said even though the sector still remained a challenge and export had gone down over the years, the government had put a number of measures in place like duty credit certificate schemes, tariff reduction and the like.
Davies visits to the Prestige Clothing Factory and Damen Shipyards Group were part of the “Taking the dti to the Factories” campaign”. The campaign is aimed at offering the political leadership of the department an opportunity to interact with directors of companies that have received funding from Department of Trade and Industry in order to assess the impact of the financial support.
“In order to address these challenges in the sector the dti introduced the Clothing and Textiles Competitiveness Programme, which has had a big impact so far including the saving of the 69 000 stable jobs,” he said. “The programme has also been responsible for the introduction of the vertical cluster through the Competitive Improvement Programme (CIP). The Foschini Group was the first big retailer to embrace the dti CIP concept by forming the first vertical ordinary cluster, which was formed and approved in April 2011,” said Davies.
Low wages won’t advance manufacturing – Davies
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