AGOA GIRLS AT NAMBOOLE
Jul 04, 2002
OVER 2,000 girls yesterday swarmed Mandela National Stadium in Kampala to be recruited for the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) job opportunities in a planned local textile factory.
By Cyprian Musoke and Stephen IlungoleOVER 2,000 girls yesterday swarmed Mandela National Stadium in Kampala to be recruited for the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) job opportunities in a planned local textile factory.A total of 1,656 were recruited as part of the 2,000 girls needed by Apparels Tri-Star (Uganda) Limited. The girls were from various remote villages all over the 56 districts of Uganda. They will be trained in fitting and operating the high-tech machinery that will produce garments for export to America.The first batch of 500 girls will start training tomorrow at the former Coffee Marketing Board premises at Bugolobi, near Kampala. President Yoweri Museveni, the chief architect of the AGOA initiative, is expected to commission the training. The girls, tired after travelling long distances from their remote areas, let out a deafening shriek when told that they would be housed, fed, and treated at the training premises, all costs met by the government. The girls jumped, sang and danced away in ecstasy, overwhelmed at the sudden turn their lives had taken. Others looked adoringly at the gigantic stadium. The directors of Tri-Star, Kumar Dewapura and his partner, Veluppillai Kananathan, will foot the instructors’ bills and provide the machinery for training.Kumar said he would personally do the training during the first week before handing it over to his eight Sri Lankan experts, who are already in the country.A group of 500 girls will be trained for a month at a time, beginning July before the production starts in the first week of September. The first exports to the US market under AGOA, according to Kumar, will be sometime in December.Kumar said there was a possibility of creating a countrywide chain of textile factories within three years. He said after the Kampala project is successful, Jinja will be next.The beaming Kumar expressed a lot of optimism at the project, saying he had time-tested experience with similar projects in Sri Lanka, Kenya and Botswana with unbelievable results.“We shall in no time begin exporting to the USA. I have done this concept in Sri-Lanka, opened 32 factories and created 30,000 jobs,†Kumar boasted. Ends