Ghana Textile Printing (GTP) Limited, has laid off 178 workers over operational challenges.
The affected staff comprises 138 permanent and 40 casual workers.
The Marketing Director of GTP, Rev. Stephen Kofi Badu who disclosed this to Citi Business News attributed the situation to a restructuring of the company’s operations to sustain its viability.
“Two major problems that confront us is the issue of counterfeit and the energy cost which are all affecting our bottom line operations. We needed to take certain action and part of that is to restructure. As a result, the redundancy is a consequence of the restructuring,” he explained.
The textiles company which has had to bear the brunt of competition from pirated products, has undertaken previous redundancy exercises between 2014 and 2015.
But Rev. Badu tells Citi Business News the numbers have increased significantly this time round.
“The first batch was in late 2014 when about 22 of our staff were laid off; then in 2015 a few others were also laid off but the number has increased this time round because of the restructuring.”
In addition, the company was unable to meet its target for 2016 following the impact of the high operational costs.
“We could not achieve our targets for the year; the year is about to end and so far, we are nowhere near our targets. We were expecting to sell at least eighteen million yards but as it stands now, we are nowhere near that,” Rev. Badu opined.
Meanwhile GTP says it is highly hopeful of the policies of the incoming government.
According to the company, the new government should institute measures to reduce the high utility costs and ease out the high burden cost.
“We are very hopeful; we’re expecting a good year ahead of us …our utility bills are very high and it is killing us,” the company’s Marketing Director concluded.