More than 50 employees sacked by textile firms in the Export Processing Zone, Athi River, have found new positions at a firm in Kitengela.
The workers, part of many others who lost their EPZ jobs at the onset of the Covid-19 outbreak in March, are now employed by Migori Garments Company Ltd.
Migori Garments director Paul Juma said they intervened to ensure that the staffers’ families don’t suffer after their positions were rendered redundant.
“We have to date hired 52 of the sacked employees to date,” Juma told journalists outside his firm's premises in Kitengela.
The company makes school, corporate, staff and hospitality uniforms, suits, wedding gowns and other items.
Juma said the company has 120 electric sewing machines and that their products are sold in Nairobi, Nyanza, Western, Kajiado, Machakos and North Rift.
He said the new machine operators have been hired to produce face masks and PPE. The company has approval for PPE production from the relevant authorities.
Juma said the hired staffers were also helping in the production of school uniforms ahead of schools’ reopening.
“We have 8,000 shirts, 8,000 trousers, 4,000 skirts, 3,000 jumpers for various schools that we supply across the country. We are producing more uniforms in readiness for normalcy and reopening of schools,” Juma said.
Juma said he was constructing go-downs in Rapogi, Migori county to create more jobs for thousands of jobless Kenyans.
The idea to start the company struck Juma when he worked for a tour and travel company in 1999. The firm was established with just one machine.
“I later bought six more machines since my wife was a tailor only for all of them to be stolen at night in Kayole where we lived then,” Juma said.
