The Hindu Business Line : European clothing retailers draw flak

THE International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation has described the current campaign by European retailers against the EU's recent restraints on textile and clothing imports from China as "exaggerated" and devoid of substance.

It asked the clothing retailers to get real and "quit whinging" about the EU restraints against China. The federation in a statement said despite fully knowing the terms of China's accession to the World Trade Organisation, which include provisions for safeguard action on textiles and clothing trade till the beginning of 2008, these retailers from EU and the US rushed headlong to China for imports, abandoning their long-term suppliers elsewhere including in some of the world's poorest countries.

The importers piled order upon order, which resulted in China shipping more in the first few months of 2005 than in the whole of the previous year. The EU halted imports of Chinese textile goods that breached quota limits agreed upon earlier in the year. As a result, stocks of sweaters, trousers, bras and other garments have been piling up in European port warehouses since last month, the statement said.

The EU importers who were now whinging about the possibility of "empty shelves" uttered not a word of regret when many of their previous suppliers went out of business in countries such as Mauritius, Lesotho and Cambodia, leaving their workers destitute, the federation has charged.

The federation is a global association of 220 unions from 110 countries with a membership of 10 million workers.

The federation has said it is needless to say that China is not the only textiles and clothing supplier in the world. Turkey, Mexico, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kenya and Poland are among the more than 100 nations capable of producing quality products at short notice and with considerably more respect for workers' rights than China. The retailers should therefore get real and not put all their eggs in one basket and instead return to sourcing, as they did in the past, from other supplying nations which served them well till recently, it added.

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