Vice-President Nangolo Mbumba has reiterated government's commitment to grow the textile sector as approved by Cabinet.
Mbumba says the sector has the potential to create thousands of jobs, especially for women and youth.
Speaking at the inauguration of the school uniform manufacturing project at Nkurenkuru, Mbumba says Namibia needs to cut on its heavy reliance on school uniform imports.
Mbumba says it is time Namibia develops labour-intensive sectors instead of relying on mining, agriculture and fisheries to provide jobs.
“However, over the years our government has been making efforts in addressing unemployment by identifying, promoting and investing in labour-intensive sectors, the clothing and garment industry has been identified as one of the sectors with the potential to employ more people especially women and youth. This is because the sector offers entry-level jobs for low or unskilled workers, the sector also has low investment costs in acquiring modern production technologies compared to other sectors.”
The Ministry of Industrialization and Trade revamped its small and medium enterprises park to accommodate the textile centre.
Lucia Ipumbu says the School Uniform Manufacturing Centre is a contribution to the realization of the country's growth at home strategy.
Ipumbu urged manufacturers to adhere to standards.
“At MIT, we are doing all we can to ensure that there is indeed growth at home to prosper our nation's economic landscape and our point of departure is really to ensure that Namibian entrepreneurial capacity is enhanced to have market access both locally and internationally.”
Also speaking at the occasion was Kavango West Governor Sirkka Ausiku.
“The launch of the school uniforms manufacturing project is also a good initiative because it is responding to our developmental agenda of the region, Cde VP our region has identified agriculture, manufacturing and tourism as sectors that can help us to develop our region and create needed employment.”
The Nkurenkuru centre becomes the fourth after similar centres were set up in Windhoek, Ovitoto and Outapi.