Printex cries foul over gov’t free school uniform contract
Printex Ghana Limited, a local textile manufacturing company, is on the verge of collapse over government’s failure to honour its promise to them to produce fabrics for the production of free school uniforms to basic school pupils across the country.
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According to the General Manager in charge of Administration at Printex, Mr Moses Tetteh Zizer, the Ministry of Education in 2009 contracted the company to provide 5,000,500 (five million and five hundred) yards of fabric for the purpose of providing free school uniforms to pupils in basic schools across the country.
He said the agreement was such that, after the production, companies listed under Printex would then sew the uniforms to be delivered to the Ministry of Education for further supply to the pupils.
Mr Zizer, however, explained that, in 2011, after the company successfully produced over three million yards to the Ministry, it failed to honour its promise to continue with the contract.
Government in 2009 made it a policy to empower local textile manufacturing companies by procuring all its fabric needs from local manufacturers.
However, The Finder newspaper reported that the Ministry of Education had imported the fabrics being used for the free school uniform programme from China.
Speaking on Citi FM Tuesday, Mr Zizer said the action by government had affected the fortunes of the company since it had invested heavily to ensure that the fabrics were produced to the best of standards.
He said, “We expanded our production line, imported some of the printing machines and retooled some of our machines to meet the standards required to produce the school uniforms.”
According to him, after the first consignment was delivered, all efforts to get government to initiate processes for the second consignment had since proved futile.
“We personally went to the Ministry and talked to the PRO and we were assured that it would be continued. The problem was, he said government didn’t have any money and so we should wait and they would get back to us. We waited and waited but we heard nothing.”
Mr Zizer explained further that “we wrote to them on 3rd October 2011 reminding them that they have a contractual obligation with us so we want to know the way forward. We didn’t hear anything. We wrote a reminder to them on 17th January 2012 still nothing came forth. We were hoping that they would reply to tell us what was happening. But as at today we’ve not heard from them until we heard that they‘ve gone to buy from China.”
Asked if the company had contacted the Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman, since the contract was signed under Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo who was then Minister, Mr Zizer said “the last time we tried to get in touch with the Minister of Education was in mid-2012. We wrote to them severally and they did not respond so we knew they didn’t intend to honour their side of the obligation.”
“And if anything, if the minister was going to award the contract to someone else, if they had interest, they would have briefed the minister that we have this contract with Printex. These are the documents; this is what we have done,” he explained further.
Mr Zizer also expressed disappointment in government’s inability to honour its promise to local manufacturing companies.
“The textile industry is on the verge of collapse,” he cried.
According to him, Printex Ghana employs about 500 people while GTP and ATL employ about 2000 and 1,500 people respectively.
However, he said GTP and ATL have had to lay off some of their employees due to the dwindling fortunes of the textile industry.
“When we met then vice president now president, the agreement was that they were going to channel all the governmental contracts, police, army, navy to the local industry and so the other industries were advised to go and retool and they were even told that if they needed assistance, government was going to give them assistance to retool in expectation of having these contracts. So all of us did what we were supposed to do and were waiting. Now as we speak, we don’t know what our future will be,” he said.
