in indonesia, “All the shutters of the stalls at the Cimol Gedebage market have been closed since the Minister of Commerce banned the sale of imported second-hand clothes,” reports Compass.
Located in Bandung, the fashion capital of Indonesia, this famous market covers an area of 14,000 m.2 and there are several thousand stalls selling second-hand clothes of big brands. On March 20, the police conducted a search and unexpectedly found 200 bundles of illegally imported second-hand clothing.
This activity”undermines the national textile industry”This was announced on March 15 by Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Koran Tempo.
It’s time, count Compassthat the government conduct a serious investigation to disclose to consumers how all this product is found in bulk in the markets, in certain malls and on online sales sites.
The Minister of Cooperatives, Small and Medium Enterprises, Teten Masduki, acknowledged that despite a 2015 decree banning the import of used clothing, this traffic increased by 623% in 2022. Compass, he denied “Environmentalists’ argument that using imported used clothing would be good for the environment. If there are creations of the textile industry and designers who recycle leftover materials, then these are national products, not imported second-hand products.
Ramadan
Until a compromise is found between the state and thrift stores, this ban is a disaster for the latter. It falls at the beginning of Ramadan, the time of year when Indonesians buy the most clothes to prepare for family reunions at the end of the fasting month.
Jemmy Kartiva Sastraatmadja, President of the Indonesian Textile Association (API), considers this a necessary evil because this traffic threatens the lives of 3 million textile workers in Indonesia, knowing that this sector has been particularly affected by the pandemic. About 90,000 workers were laid off in 2022, and the trend is likely to continue in 2023, so much so that the government has allowed companies to cut their employees’ wages by 20% to keep employment.
Source: Courrier International
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