GOODBYE, GOOD LUCK - TEX RAY TO WORKERS

A section of the Tex Ray workers.

MATSAPHA - Goodbye, good luck in your new endeavours, Tex Ray Managing Director (MD) Ricky Tai has told the 1 450 retrenched workers.

The MD, who was represented by the factory’s Human Resources personnel Nganekwane Matsebula, said this when addressing the ex-workers during their meeting held at the company yesterday before they received their last salaries.

The meting was also attended by a team from the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, which was lead by Labour Commissioner Khabonina Dlamini and the Swaziland Manufacturing and Allied Workers Union (SMAWU) together with the Amalgamated Trade Union of Swaziland (ATUSWA) Executive members.

“Goodbye and we wish you all good luck in your new endeavours. The closure of the company is not our will as a company but the situation was out of our control and there was nothing much we could do about it,” Tai said.

He said everyone knows that the company stopped operating because there were no orders from the United States of America’s (USA) market, where the factory was exporting all its products. The reason for that was the country’s removal from benefitting from the Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA), he said.

AGOA offers a preferential access to the United States market for goods from about 40 Sub-Saharan nations that meet the required political and economical standards. The removal of the country from the Act meant that the country would no longer have the preferential access to the markets and this will be effective from January 1, 2015. It is worth mentioning that AGOA contributed very immensely in fighting unemployment in the country as over 17 000 people were employed in the textile firms across the country.

In the letters that the company sent to the workers unions and Ministry of Labour, via the Labour Commissioner’s office, the factory mentioned that it was due to ship its last order by November 15, 2014 so that it arrives in the USA before January 1, 2015.
The MD also assured the workers that the company would remain in the country and was intending to re-open after securing market either overseas or in Southern Africa. He said upon securing the market, they would re-open and give the retrenched workers first preference when hiring.

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