Textile workers hit streets over fake prints

Hundreds of textile workers are expected to demonstrate in Accra today, April 27, 2018 to protest the failure of the government’s taskforce to stop smuggling and sale of pirated wax prints.

The anti-pirated textile taskforce was reconstituted in October last year with a mandate of checking smuggling of fake wax prints into the county. But the textile workers say this has rather resulted in the flooding of the market with pirated wax prints.

Speaking to Starr News, the spokesperson for the Coalition of Textile Workers John Ackon said the situation has left most of the textile companies laying off workers and reeling under huge debts.

“We want government to give the old mandate that was given to the taskforce back to be able to go to the market and seize all the pirated cloths like they were doing in 2010 and that was what we have been telling government and they are refusing to do, because we realized that when they started the influx of the pirated wax reduced because when the women had their prints seized they stopped buying the pirated ones,” Ackon noted.

The textile workers have also planned to petition President Nana Akufo-Addo through the Trade Ministry.