YANGON/DHAKA/BANGKOK (Reuters) – Zarchi Lwin pawned her only 2 gold bracelets for $140 when the owner of the Myanmar factory where she sewed winter coats for British merchant Next Plc shut it down after orders dried up due to the coronavirus.
Zar Chi Liwn postures for photo near her hostel, in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar April 28,2020 Photo taken April 28,2020 REUTERS/Myat Thu Kyaw
She is among numerous countless garment employees across Asia who have been laid off, according to the Workers Rights Consortium, a labour rights campaign group, and are now having a hard time to endure with little welfare assistance, mired in debt and oftentimes reliant on food handouts.
” If I work and an earnings, I can pay for medical treatment for my mom,” Zarchi Lwin, 29, told Reuters from the house she shows her 56- year-old mother, who has lung illness, in a shanty town on the outskirts of Yangon. “Now no earnings, no task,” she said, resisting tears. “We do not know what to do.”
Next briefly closed all its shops in Britain in March due to the coronavirus. The company said in a statement it had just cancelled some orders and “endeavoured to be fair” to its providers. KGG, the factory where Zarchi Lwin worked, did not react to requests for remark.
Because the 1960 s, Asia has grown into the world’s garment factory, sending about $670 billion worth of clothes, shoes and bags a year to Europe, the United States and richer Asian countries, according to the International Labour Organization, a United Nations company.
After non-essential shops were closed in numerous countries and individuals were informed to stay at home to avoid additional spread of the illness, international merchants from ASOS Plc to New Look stated they cancelled orders with garment makers. Factory owners in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Cambodia immediately shut down thousands of factories and sent out house employees with little or no pay.
Retailers usually put orders a minimum of three months ahead of shipment and pay for the finished product when it is provided. Initially most retailers cancelled all outstanding orders, but lots of changed their position in March and April after a public outcry, agreeing to pay for goods that had actually already been made or were mid-production.
To complete pending orders, about half of Bangladesh’s 4,000 garment factories have reopened, according to garment maker associations. About 150 of Myanmar’s 600 or two factories have closed down, while 200 out of 600 or so are closed in Cambodia.
Lots of factories that have actually resumed are struggling to impose social d