By Amin Kef Sesay
Mining companies operating in the country now have a golden opportunity to secure their employees’ personal protecting equipment from TEES Garment Factory, a state of art business outlet situated on Wilkinson Road in the West End of Freetown and owned by Alhaji Musa Tarawally.
According to him, for now he is putting premium on three key areas namely industrial garment production, capacity building and printing.
He furthered that the main objective behind the establishment of the garment factory is to make it a component in this country that will tremendously contribute to overall socio-economic development adding that currently there are 18 experts from Pakistan, India, Cape Verde, Philippinesand their main task or focus is to transfer knowledge to Sierra Leoneans and make production faster.
According to him, the factory has the capacity to employ 250 workers and produce a minimum of 50,000 dresses monthly further revealing
how they are now training 250 Sierra Leoneans in industrial tailoring.
“Our product lines will be school uniforms, military, police, prisons, fire force and all security uniforms, industrial wears, wedding dresses and all fashion wears,” he disclosed.
Musa Tarawally stated that with a garment factory like TEES, fully equipped, it is but prudent on the part of Managements of various mining companies to procure all their workers’ personal protective wears from the factory.
He maintained that it is advisable that rather than buying personal protective equipment from overseas, some of which are of inferior quality, TEES Garment Factory can easily fit in to manufacture them as per specifications and supply them.
In as much as Government has the onus of deepening the country’s Local Content Policy in ways of promoting indigenous talents and skills as opposed on dependency on external resources or products it must ensure that the policy is meaningfully implemented to produce positive outcomes. Such could be deemed as far from protectionism but rather a deliberate attempt to create the enabling environment for local ideas and industries to thrive amidst stiff competition.
Musa Tarawally reiterated how the garment factory has the capability of manufacturing and supplying personal protective equipment for mining companies.
“In as much as it is in tandem with enhancing the Local Content Policy it is also very advantageous in the sense that such could be cost effective on the part of these mining companies simply because they will not be paying certain taxes on imported personal protective equipment,” he averred.
He said in the next two years they will expand the company’s production line and start cotton plantation all over the country in order to develop the textile factory and at the same time create 25 thousand jobs within 5 years of cotton plantation.
Musa Tarawally said that TEES Garment factory will not only offer employment opportunities to Sierra Leoneans directly and indirectly but will definitely boost the country’s economy in diverse ways including payment of taxes to Government.
The factory, according to him, will not only cater for the local Sierra Leone market, but also will be exporting its products to other African countries, America, Asia and the EU, and at the same time is expected to have contractual agreements from countries within the West African sub-region too.
He expressed optimism to make Sierra Leone the best country for professional sewing and garment production in West Africa.
