The Textile, Garment and Leather Employees Union (TEGLU) has warned textile pirates to desist from stealing their designs and replicating fake trademarks.
TEGLU General Secretary Abraham Koomson, who was a guest on the Executive Breakfast Show on Wednesday, January 11, told the host that local manufacturers invest in the creation of the design, however some textile dealers scan the design and take it to China to have similar fabrics manufactured at cheap cost and at poor quality.
The inferior fabrics are then embossed with fake trademarks and smuggled onto the Ghanaian market and sold at cheap cost. This, he said, was a major challenge affecting the textile industry in Ghana.
“It is really destroying our business as people will buy the products thinking they were locally manufactured. You go wash it once or twice and then it starts fading, then they turn people against the local product,” Mr Koomson told host Jonas Ofori-Yeboah.
Mr Koomson wants government to address “over taxation” of textile producers and tighten entry points of the country to prevent flooding of the Ghanaian market with such inferior products.
He has also charged government to check unfair competition by implementing a mechanism that will cut down the cost of production to ensure relatively lower prices without compromising the quality of local fabrics.
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