Police, Army Uniforms May Soon Be Procured From Kenyan Firms To Promote Job, Wealth Creation.

The PS State Department for Cooperatives Ali Noor Ismael addressing the guests and staff of Thika Cloth mills during the launch of the company's new state-of-the-art spinning machine.

The Principal Secretary State Department for Cooperatives Ali Noor Ismael has promised that the government is working out a policy that will see the ‘Buy Kenya Build Kenya’ is well entrenched into the system to create an enabling environment to local companies access the local market in a view to promote wealth and job creation.

Speaking at Thika Cloth Mills (TCM) in Thika West Sub-County during the inauguration of a new state-of-the-art spinning machine the PS pointed out that the raft of business reforms initiated by the government had seen the country’s standing improve by 21 places in the latest World Bank ease of doing business report.

  

“In promoting the ‘Buy Kenya Build Kenya’ policy, we intend to create more jobs and in the case of Thika Cloth Mills, more jobs will be created in cotton farming, ginning, spinning, weaving, processing and trading. Currently in Parliament, there is a Bill seeking to entrench a legal framework to actualise the objective of ‘Buy Kenya Build Kenya’. The government has also introduced, in the current set of performance contracts within government departments, a rule that will help it measure how they are realising the agreement of ‘Buy Kenya Build Kenya’,” said the PS.

The Doing Business 2017 report released last month showed that Kenya was placed at position 92 out of 190 countries surveyed, with Mauritius and Rwanda outpacing Kenya at 49th and 56th place respectively.

New Zealand replaced Singapore this year as the easiest place in the world to do business. Rwanda and Kenya are the most competitive economies in East Africa and are among the top 10 most competitive economies in Africa at position three and six respectively.

The Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) CEO Phyllis Wakiaga was all praise in the way the company had contributed to the economy and job creation in the country.

“The cotton textile and apparel value chain is a very highly integrated sector which has a lot of value addition, is highly labour intensive and numerous ripple effect to the economy. The sector exported about $380 million worth of apparel in 2015. It is employs about 42,000 people with the domestic sector employing about 21,000 people including the informal players,” said Wakiaga.

She therefore said that the launch of this modern spinning machinery at the TCM was one of the bold moves they were taking as a country in backward integration.

Wakiaga pointed out that she was seeing Thika Cloth Mills positioning itself to take advantage of the slowdown in China’s textile industry and in line with the current technology improvement in the sector that will enhance our capacity as a country. This, she said, will enable them to produce high quality products to compete effectively in the global market in terms of variety, quantity, quality and pricing.

“Today marks a great milestone in Kenya as we increase our spinning capacity and prepare to take advantage of the slowdown in China. Currently, the country’s installed spinning capacity is about 50,000 spindles against the world’s 245 million, meaning that there is a lot of room for growth. The installation of this technology here will therefore enable the company to continue supporting about 22,000 cotton farmers,” she noted.

Businessman and Industrialist Manilal Premchand Chandaria (Manu Chandaria) challenged the government to come up with workable programmes that will guarantee job creation. He added that the responsibility to build Kenya lied on everyone’s shoulders.

“Unless the government is prepared to understand the reality that there are children sitting at home without a job whereas thousands of those jobs are being exported outside the country through imports of readymade goods, their talk about building Kenya is meaningless,” said Chandaria.

Thika Cloth Mills is of Kenya’s leading textile industries that was established in 1958 by the Late Mahendra Somchand Khimasia. It produces a wide range of quality fabrics to cater for the demand in corporate uniform fabrics, household furnishing materials, promotion textiles and school uniform fabrics. Currently, it employs about 700 employees who work in its various departments.