As the Federal Government is focusing on job creation, especially at the informal sector of the economy, the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers (NUTGW) has urged the Federal Government to establish an Institute of Tailoring to ensure training and retraining of tailors in the country.
The union also called on the governments at all levels, their agencies and parastatals to patronize Nigerian tailors and include them in the recovery plans of the Federal Government.
General Secretary of the union Comrade Isah Aremu who was speaking at the induction of tailors into the NUTGW in Abuja, lamented a situation where Police and Civil Defence uniforms as well as school uniforms are imported into the country, instead of using Nigeria textile materials and tailors.
Comrade Aremu, who is also the Vice President of IndustraiAll, said: “We are calling on the Federal Government to immediately set up the National Institute for tailors to train them and skilled them like other countries that have this institute? We called on the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) to key into this project, while UNIDO and the ILO are also giving capacity support to them.
”We are using this forum to also call on the Federal Government that the new recovery plan should be inclusive of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMS) and self-employed people, and the informal sector workers because the cost of doing business for them is high .
He called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to include self employed persons in its borrowing plans, adding that “what is good for Dangote and other big companies is also good for this common people”.
“When you hear CBN talking of allocating scarce resources to manufacturing to people who produce locally, they do not capture these people, yet 100 per cent are local people because tailors use locally produce materials and labour for their work.
“So what is good for Dangote is also good for this ordinary people who have no voice but now that they are members of the union, they have a big voice which can speak for them” he said.
He added: “If government is going to pursue the policy of providing school uniforms for school children in the state we should not go and buy the fabric from china and sew them from china but give them to our tailors. If you also train them they can sew police uniforms, customs uniforms, among others.”
and then