Aregbesola Inaugurates Garment Factory
•3000 jobs in Osun
Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola has said his administration will continue to provide infrastructure and security for businesses to thrive.
Aregbesola spoke on Monday in Osogbo, the state capital, while inaugurating the Omoluabi Garment Factory.
He said the factory is a testimony of his administration’s investment drive, adding that the state has the required market as well as the human and material resources.
Aregbesola said Osun pupils were given uniforms to give them a common identity and purpose, as well as a sense of unity and pride, which “had been lost to the decay in public schools” before the inception of his administration.
He said: “Through this alone, we provided job opportunities for our market women, who supplied the materials for the uniforms, and about 3,000 tailors.
“This factory will, henceforth, produce the school uniforms. It will employ our people, buy its input here and the batik it will produce will be sewn by our tailors.
“All of these, among other gains, will have numerous spin offs that will rebound to the advantage of the people. The uniform material will be sold and sewn at controlled prices to make it affordable for our people. You are not only assured of quality; you will get it at good prices.”
The governor said the factory is one of those established through the revitalisation of the education sector.
He said another factory will soon begin the production of the e-learning tablet, Opon-Imo, and other electronic gadgets in Ilesha.
Aregbesola urged the managers of the factory to be innovative and “uncompromisingly committed” to quality, saying: “This might appear to be a small beginning, but what I am seeing is the onset of a giant clothing industry that will take the nation and West Africa by storm in the future.”
He said his administration was focused on the implementation of policies that “would improve the lives of the people”.
The General Manager, Operations, Bank of Industry (BoI), Mr. Joseph Babatunde, hailed Aregbesola’s “visionary leadership”.
He said his bank provides financial support for the training of fashion designers, whose products would be consumed locally and abroad.
Babatunde called for a review of the agreement between the government and the bank to accommodate more trainees.
The factory’s Managing Director, Mrs. Folake Oyemade, said by the end of the year, over 3,000 tailors would have been trained.
She said: “Today’s ceremony is a demonstration of one of the governor’s campaign promises. He promised to make Osun an industrial haven, where youths, as leaders of tomorrow, would be catered for through skill acquisition, job creation, poverty alleviation and wealth creation. This is just the beginning of better things to come.”
THE NATION