TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Textile industry cries out for help as layoffs loom
While imports have been an longstanding issue for the domestic textile industry, it is having a wider, more significant impact amid the current pandemic.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Workers produce knitwear on March 6, 2020 at the Rajong Binong Jati Center in Bandung, West Java. Industry associations have called for government safeguards to help textile producers avoid laying off its workers amid the COVID-19 epidemic. (Antara/Raisan Al Farisi)
T
he textile and textile products (TPT) industry is appealing to the government for help as it faces imminent layoffs from decreased cash flow and declining demand as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Secretary-general Redma Gita Wirawasta of the Indonesian Synthetic Fiber Producers Association (APSyFI) said that increasing garment imports would also leave domestic producers with an even smaller slice of a market that had shrunk due to COVID-19.
“We want the government to provide solutions [...] on how this small market can be given entirely to domestic producers to keep running. Because if such actions are not executed and we don’t have a market anymore, layoffs are not impossible," he cautioned on Monday during a teleconference with industry stakeholders.
Yet, garment imports are among a slew of issues that are threatening jobs in the industry, which has been hard hit by the epidemic. The TPT industry absorbs around 135,000 workers per year, or 22.5 percent of 600,000 workers in the industrial sector, according to the Industry Ministry's latest estimate.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated in a recent report that almost 25 million jobs could be lost as a result of COVID-19.
During the teleconference, Indonesian Textile Association (API) chairman Jemmy Kartiwa Sastraatmadja said that the global epidemic had caused a sharp decline in demand over the last 10 days, while current orders had been delayed or even canceled.
