The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) on Tuesday welcomed the agreement to limit Chinese clothing and textile imports.
Spokesperson Mziwakhe Hlangani said in a statement that the move will benefit the local manufacturing sector by creating 55 000 jobs.
”A new dawn has emerged for the clothing and textile industry, which was on the brink of a virtual collapse,” he said.
”A growing and commanding sector will help us move towards achieving targets set by the Growth and Development Summit of halving unemployment by 2014.”
Hlangani’s statement comes a day after the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) publicly supported the move as a positive job-creation method.
On Monday, Sactwu’s general secretary Ebrahim Patel urged the South African textile industry to use the opportunity to improve worker skills.
”We need to use the space created to ensure we make our factories state-of-the-art and improve training of workers on a scale that will develop South Africa into a world-class producer,” he said.
”Over the past four years, the local fashion manufacturing industry has lost approximately 67 000 jobs, largely as a result of a surge of imports from China.”
Patel further said the vast volumes of imports from China have had a devastating impact, resulting in factory closures in the poorest parts of the country, such as Dimbaza in the Eastern Cape, which have become industrial ghost towns. — Sapa