Samson Sesete weaves a small bag at his loom in Salem’s, a small-scale Ethiopian manufacturer of scarves and bags. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Mar 26 2014 (IPS)

The sign for Salem’s directs you off a busy road in Addis Ababa, down a side street to a compound where multiple pairs of feet move up and down working treadles, and wooden shuttles flit back and forth, as Ethiopian sheumanoch — weavers — ply their trade.

Seated at their looms, most appear to be making scarfs, the majority of which are sold on site in a colourful shop. But a small number of scarfs are destined for shores and stores far away from Ethiopia. Ethiopia currently has 60 garment factories and 15 textile mills in operation, as the country tries to position itself as the next source country for the world’s clothing industry.

Currently, increased international interest in Ethiopia’s centuries-old textile industry is seeing some of the world’s biggest companies investing in it.

At the same time this interest is affording small-scale business like Salem’s, which employs 14 weavers, a chance to grow.

“It is a time of change, absolutely,” Salem Kassahun, the owner, tells IPS. “Now we make what our grandmothers wore but also what our daughters will wear and what the wider world wants.”

Last week she exported 700 scarfs to London-based Rose & Rose, which sells designer scarves and accessories. It was only the second shipment, but she hopes it will become a regular order.

Five years ago, there was little interest in Ethiopia’s textiles, Salem says, but during the last three years queries from overseas have increased steadily.

Larger domestic manufacturers appear to share her optimism.

More buyers are being attracted as a result of increased international attention, Fassil Tadese, chief executive of MAA Garment and Textiles Factory, tells IPS.

The MAA Garment and Textiles Factory, which is based outside Mekele, a city in northern Ethiopia, employs 1,500 workers, of which nearly 90 percent are women, and exports knitted garments to Europe and U.S.

Also, Fassil points out, manufacturers of auxiliary accessories and dyestuffs are coming, which is helping improve the local supply chain and access to materials.

Trends and events on the global stage have impacted where large international textile manufacturers set up shop. 

The collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh last April, which killed more than 1,100 people, drew worldwide attention to the poor conditions of many Asian factories.

At the same time, production costs in Asia are increasing, with salary increases easily outstripping inflation.

And election-related violence in recent months has disrupted Bangladesh’s clothing industry, the second-biggest after China. In addition, strikes by garment workers in Cambodia, another major supplier, have increased pressure on global firms.

Tesco, the world’s third-largest retailer, recently announced it expects to source more clothes from Ethiopia.

Hennes & Mauritz, popularly known as H&M, the world’s second-biggest fashion retailer, also said it sees good opportunities for producing clothing in Ethiopia and across sub-Saharan Africa.

Ethiopia currently has 60 garment factories and 15 textile mills in operation, as the country tries to position itself as the next source country for the world’s clothing industry, according to Tadesse Haile, state minister for Industry.

Ethiopia’s new role as an awakening textile giant is helped by an abundance of cotton — millions of hectares suitable for growing cotton remain untapped — and labour, thanks to a population of about 90 million, with a large proportion under the age of 30.

That this influx of foreign companies might squeeze out local manufacturers is not a concern, Fassil says. The massive textile market means there is plenty of room.

Also, he says, competition spurs efficiency and technological upgrades: “Hence we welcome investments from all over the world.”

So as international companies try diversifying from relying on Asian sourcing — H&M is one of the biggest buyers of garments from Bangladesh — Ethiopia increasingly appears to be a beneficiary.

Tesco predicts that by 2014 and 2015 it will export about 1.5 to two million dollars of products from Ethiopia, increasing to about 11 million dollars by 2016 and 2017.

At the same time, foreign companies are particularly sensitive about the need for regulated growth and ethically sound practices, so that mistakes made elsewhere in the world are not repeated.

“It really matters to us that clothes are produced in good conditions and everyone involved is treated decently,” Giles Bolton, the ethical trading director at Tesco, tells IPS.

Hence the company is engaging closely with the Ethiopian government and local business to ensure the long-term development of a well-regulated, ethical clothing industry, he adds.

An advantage in Ethiopia is many suppliers have worker unions which ensure effective dialogue between workers and employers, Anna Eriksson, a spokesperson for H&M, tells IPS.

At Salem’s the weavers appear content working away in the smart and breezy compound. But like most employees, they have concerns.

Weaving is a difficult and physically demanding job, Samson Sesete, who has been a weaver for seven years, tells IPS.

And they are paid per item, which means incomes vary, 21-year-old Teshome Onke, who began weaving at 14 in southern Ethiopia, tells IPS.

Fast weavers can earn about 2,000 birr (110 dollars) per month, he says, though their slower companions average closer to 1,500 birr (81 dollars).

And being paid for an item that is then sold for at least twice the cost appears a source of frustration.

Salem says she discusses wages with the weavers, acknowledging how they always want to be paid more.

“But then I wouldn’t be able to sell anything,” she points out.

A 25 percent mark up in price covers overheads, Salem says. A further 65 percent is the maximum profit margin that could be added, and 30 percent of this goes to the government in taxes.

Another challenge for a small business like hers is access to capital. Banks want to see collateral — colourful designs and ideas are not sufficient — and currently she doesn’t have enough.

Across the road Salem has a second compound where she wants to employ dozens more weavers to grow the business.

But currently it’s still too early to commit to expansion.

“Although we are getting plenty of interest, I’m waiting to see whether questions turn into orders,” Salem says.

And even if those orders come, she acknowledges that it will be hard work within the highly-competitive international market where order quotas must be delivered on time, every time.

“You have to strive for perfection,” Salem says. “All of us need to adapt our mindsets for the international market.”

Many of the workers who survived the factory collapse in Bangladesh have lost their limbs. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, May 20 2013 (IPS)

“It was dark and hot with choking dust all around. The air was filled with the smell of decomposing corpses,” recalled Nasima, a 24-year-old factory worker who spent four days buried under the rubble of an eight-storey building that collapsed in a suburb of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka last month.

The young woman recounted the terror that she and four fellow female workers experienced as they lay beneath glass and concrete, just “inches” from death. Rescue teams found them sandwiched between the fifth and sixth floors of the massive Rana Plaza that had housed five garment factories.

“I will resort to begging if I have to, but I’m not working in a garments factory ever again." - Mariam, a 25-year-old survivor of the Rana Plaza tragedy.
Nasima told IPS she was “too scared” to remember all the details of those 96 hours. “I saw my colleagues die, just a few yards from me, one after the other.” Her only indication that they were dead was when she could no longer hear their voices calling out to her in the dark.

Nasima had joined Ether Garments, one of the many companies housed in Rana Plaza, only 20 days before the tragedy, Bangladesh’s worst industrial accident, which killed 1,127 workers according to the latest count.

While families searched desperately for loved ones in the ruins in the town of Savar, 25 kilometres from Dhaka, reports of negligence and lack of workplace safety emerged. It became clear that factory owners had been warned of a possible collapse of the building that was only legally permitted to house five floors.

As survivors came to and began to speak out, they reported that management personnel had ignored recommendations by engineers to keep factories shut on Apr. 24, going so far as to threaten workers with dismissal if they failed to report for duty as usual.

The revelation sparked international outrage and shed light on the inner workings of Bangladesh’s garments sector, the country’s largest foreign exchange earner, which brings in about 20 billion dollars a year.

Multinational retailers like H&M, Gap, Walmart and Primark, which have outsourced most of their production to Bangladesh to take advantage of cheap, mostly female, labour, came under fire for failing to enforce safety standards.

While these accusations are not new, rights groups hope this latest tragedy will jolt the industry into implementing better labour laws and adhering to safety standards.

They say the roughly 2,500 rescued workers, many of them women, are living proof that Bangladesh must not repeat the mistakes that led to the Savar tragedy.

Living proof of negligence

Speaking to IPS from her hospital bed in the National Institute of Traumatology & Orthopaedic Rehabilitation (NITOR), 19-year-old Shapla, whose left arm was so badly injured that it had to be amputated on the site, recalled surviving for several hours squeezed between the second and third stories of the building, “with blood and corpses all around.”

Shapla’s husband, Mehedul, who worked as a sewing operator on the same floor, told IPS he survived by sheer luck, as he had been at the back of building at the moment the massive structure pitched forward.

Most of those working at the front of the building were crushed under the full weight of falling concrete slabs and crumbling walls.

Others, like 21-year-old Razia, say it is too painful to go on. “Someone give me poison. I want to die,” she cried out in the hospital ward where she and 121 other survivors are being treated free of cost.

She told IPS she and a few other girls had been “gossiping about the previous day’s decision to keep the factory open,” despite large cracks appearing on the pillars the day before. The next minute she heard what sounded like a huge explosion; then everything went dark.

For the next 14 hours, she struggled to breathe through the thick dust that hung around her.

In the hospital bed beside her lies Shamsul Alam, a 28-year-old quality inspector whose doctors say his spinal injuries are “too dangerous to operate on” and may end up being fatal.

Though he has not been informed of their bleak diagnosis, he told IPS he now “knows what its like to be in a coffin”, explaining the helplessness of being trapped and listening to people die around you.

Meanwhile, the trauma has wiped some survivors’ memories clean. An operator named Runu, unable to recall a single thing about that fateful day, stares vacantly into space while her sister tells IPS that Runu spent a full two days under the rubble before finally seeing daylight.

Those who can remember have vowed neither to forget nor to step foot into a factory again. “I will resort to begging if I have to, but I’m not working in a garments factory ever again,” 25-year-old Mariam, whose legs and arms were pulverised by concrete and iron rods, told IPS.

“My freedom means I was born again,” added a former worker named Shakhina. “I will not make the mistake of stepping back into that death trap.”

Meanwhile, major players in the industry are finally taking heed.

A.K.M Salim Osman, president of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA), one of the industry’s apex bodies, told IPS that the incident in April was a “wake up call for us who depend on the labourers for business.”

“If we continue to ignore strict ethical standards (around) safety issues we will fail again,” he warned.

Osman said the recently ratified Bangladesh Building and Fire Safety Agreement is a step in the right direction. Under the accord, a tripartite committee comprised of company representatives, trade unions and a neutral inspector chosen by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) will monitor progress in implementation of safety standards as laid out in previous protocols such as the 2006 Occupational Safety and Health Convention.

Initiated by the IndustriALL and UNI Global Unions, the regulations insist that all buildings vulnerable to minor or major cracks be inspected and recommendations put forth by engineers adhered to immediately.

“If necessary we will force factories (with defects) to shut down until standards are met,” Mohammad Shafiqul Islam, former president of the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the largest body in the business, told IPS.

In a cabinet meeting on Apr. 29, the Bangladesh government decided to form a committee tasked with carrying out regular inspections of factories, installing fire safety devices and ensuring that companies conduct regular fire drills for the workers.

According to a statement by the American Apparel and Footwear Association, the agreement has also won support from all major locals unions, which represent the roughly 3.5 million workers employed in over 5,000 factories housed in and around Dhaka, and in the port city of Chittagong.