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Sorry state ofCtg RMG factories

Shahidul Islam
Kazi Golam Kabir, a Chittagong-based entrepreneur, launched a knitting factory in joint venture with his Chinese partner in April last year at port city's busy commercial hub -Agrabad.
The small factory, HK-TG Garments Ltd, with 160 machines and a workforce of 400 employees took virtually no time to attract major foreign buyers like the USA for its good quality products and impressive design.
With monthly (average) order of 60,000 dozens of garments from the buyers, things were pacing well and smoothly until May this year when Kabir and his factory couldn't avoid the inevitable the impact of global recession.' Hit hard by the economic meltdown, Kabir found no alternative to closing his factory in early June.
"I was not ready at all for such a day or fate even 12 to 13 months ago when I launched this factory. It's a big blow but I've to accept it,” Kabir, managing director of HK-TG, told this
correspondent recently.
Although production of the factory is closed for more than two months, the owner continues to pay salaries to nearly 170 workers with a hope that he would get fresh orders from foreign buyers once the recession is over.
Kabir said the workers now use to come to the factory in the morning, pass their time by gossiping and leave in the afternoon. And at the end of the month, withdraw salaries.
“I had to payTk 22 lakh as salaries to 400 workers when my factory was in production but now I pay only Tk 6 lakh a month to the workers," Kabir said.
Sheuli Akhter, a sewing worker, and Kamaluddin, a quality control staff, said that they would not have taken the salary without work should they have any alternative.
“It is really painful to see our factory being closed for months and we take wages without any work," they said.
Kabir is not only facing such a situation. Forty-six other small and medium-sized factories in Chittagong
have also been shut down due to recession plus other problems, including power shortage in six months since February this year.
Another such factory is GMC Apparels in Bandartila area under Bandar Police Station. Hit by recession and acute power shortage, the production of the factory, which started its journey in November 2008 with only 92 machines, came to a halt in June this year too.
“We are not getting any order for the last few months for poor production capability due to serious loadshedding and power crisis everyday. I just couldn't afford to run a generator that requires huge amount of money," Mostafizur Rahman, director of GMC, told The Daily Star.
He said the factory made a shipment of over 5,000 dozens of T-shirt just prior to the shutdown.
“It took us three months to produce those T-shirt instead of one month because of power crisis. This delayed production cost us dearly and we lost any further order," Mostafiz said.