The jobs upheaval in the local textile manufacturing sector continued yesterday when Bortex announced it was laying off 113 employees.

It was only on Tuesday that VF Malta Ltd, producers of quality jeans announced it would be closing down its plant and sacking 570 workers.

Bortex Group chairman Lino Spiteri said yesterday that the company, a producer of tailored garments and exporter since 1964, reluctantly advised the General Workers' Union, which represents the group's employees, that it was winding up its remaining production here by the middle of September.

Mr Spiteri said, however, that Bortex would continue to use Malta as its operating base, employing 129 people in the design, product development, marketing, sales and sales administration functions.

The Employment and Training Corporation said a number of employers had already shown an active interest in recruiting the redundant workers.

"Since the redundancy was published, the Vacancy Profile Unit (VPU) of the ETC has received continuous telephone calls in this regard," it said.

Pack Print and Plastic Processing also announced 23 redundancies this week. The secretary of the General Workers' Union's manufacturing and small industries section, Roberto Cristiano, said the union was extremely concerned about the situation.

Bortex and the union agreed that the redundant employees who served out their notice would receive an ex gratia payment of a week's pay for every year of service with the group.

They would also receive a payment from the Employees' Fund that was set up years ago under an agreement between the union and the group.

Mr Spiteri said that in recent years, Bortex had been responding to a loss of competitiveness and steadily reducing client prices through a repositioning programme.

This began in 1999 with the setting up of a subsidiary in Tunisia to produce part of the orders secured.

Price competitive pressure persisted and Bortex responded by finding and utilising partners in China to produce a further part of its orders.

The situation started to deteriorate early last year and become worse by last May, placing in jeopardy the overall survival of the group. The group was, as a result, forced to reposition further by discontinuing the remaining production line on the island.

In addition to utilising its managerial and supervisory human resources with regard to its production abroad, the group would retain in Malta its design, product development, marketing, sales and administration functions.

These functions would engage 95 employees, including eight expatriates and four from the rest of the EU. Their relatively high wages would represent a high-value-added element within the group's sales.

The group would also target total sales initially up to a value of €35 million annually. This total would be made up of output sourced from the subsidiary in Tunisia, from producers of children's wear in Tunisia, from producers of ladies, wear in Malta, and from China.

Output sourced in Tunisia would be serviced from Malta and shipped directly from Tunisia.

Output sourced in China would be brought to Malta, warehoused, refreshed and shipped by a team of 34 direct operators retained from the present operations.

This was not purely a warehousing operation, Mr Spiteri said, since the group would be adding value to the products in Malta and would be servicing clients in the UK and other parts of Europe.

In a statement, the ETC said that on being notified of this week's redundancies in the textiles sector, it mobilised a comprehensive package of services to VF and Bortex employees.

With immediate effect, it would be conducting a profiling exercise among these employees, through which their skills and career preferences would be established.

In parallel, during their notice period, these employees would be advised of job vacancies on a daily basis through their place of work and by e-mail should they wish.

The ETC also said that on hearing about the VF redundancies, it contacted the European Commission unit responsible for the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) to determine whether Malta would be eligible in this instance to apply for assistance under this fund.

The EGF was established at the end of last year by the Commission to fund individual support for workers made redundant due to globalisation.

The fund focuses on tailor-made activities to help workers regain their place in the labour market as rapidly as possible.

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