Pirates killing Ghana's textile industry - Textile workers

The Textile Workers Union of Ghana has blamed its shrinking industry on the imitation of their designs by foreigners.

In an interview on Atinka FM’s AM Drive on Monday with Kaakyere Ofori Ayim, Chairman for the Textile Workers Union, Mr. Abraham Koomson mentioned that the textile industry is facing lots of challenges at the moment with the imitation of designs being the serious of all.

He added that although the union is not against the importation of textiles, it is important that those foreign companies do not infringe on their right to intellectual property. He mentioned that if this is not curtailed, some textile companies will be forced to close down.

According to Koomson, the cost of production in the country is very high and the textile companies employ creative minds at a high cost to generate designs for the fabrics. He said it was disheartening to observe that designs of GTP are imitated by other companies outside the country.

He mentioned that those companies use the imitated designs and fabrics for fashion shows depriving the original owners of revenue. He stated that due to some of these issues, GTP had to close down for two weeks for the company to generate some funds for subsequent operations.

He added that the textile companies offer employments to a lot of people because they utilize the services of accountants, administrators, marketers, engineers among others and called on the government to pay attention to the textile industry.