Pakistan’s apparel sector at numerous times had to refuse orders because they lacked the capability to produce the required quantity. The apparel exports could immediately double if orders due to capacity constraints are not refused.
Leading Knitwear exporter Muhammad Ismaeel Khurram stated this adding the apparel manufacturers have capability to add number of machines in short time to increase the production capacity, but the skilled labor required to operate these machines is not available in the market he lamented.
Apparel production is labour intensive and demand for skilled stitching experts’ supervisors is very high but the vocational and technical institutes in Pakistan hardly provide 2 percent of the requirement of the garmenting industry. Export opportunities worth billions of dollars are wasted every year because of this skill shortage. The apparel industry provides on job stitching training. But lack the capacity to produce efficient supervisors. The demand for skilled stitching experts’ supervisors is very high but the vocational and technical institutes in Pakistan hardly provide 2 percent of the requirement of garmenting industry. This way the apparel producers add 10 percent labor every year. The growth in most apparel units also ranges from10 to 20 percent per year.
Now the spinners that have wealth and resources are also trying to enter the apparel sector, but they are also handicapped by the absence of a skilled workforce. They also face marketing problems that are different from selling yarns. They have to bring supervisory staff from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and poach stitchers from existing manufacturers. The poached workforce gathered from different manufacturers lacks harmony and takes time to build an efficient company culture.
