Sekete Lesaoana
The Nien Hsing group of factories is currently accepting job applications in a bid to recruit 50 workers, Newsday has learnt.
According to the Nien Hsing group manager, Ricky Chang, the hiring is meant to fill in the gaps that were left by employees who decided to resign due to being placed on temporary layoffs over the past few months.
The ongoing recruitment is a welcome change given the retrenchments that the group has been forced to embark on over the past two years due to the negative economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2021, the group, closed down its C&Y Garments factory, rendering 2700 people jobless. Three months before that, the group had also closed its Nien Hsing International factory, sending home another 2400 workers.
In 2020, the group closed its Glory International subsidiary and laid off 1500 workers.
“The company is taking in about 50 people for the sectors that are already operational as the factories are resuming work following the holiday recess even though the full resumption will be on February 6,†Chang said.
“We are hiring people for Nien Hsing International factory, which was previously known as Glory Garments which closed down since we now have only two operational factories.â€
Asked whether the company would hire more employees this year, Chang said hiring more workers would depend on the orders they receive from the market.
He, however, indicated that they had been receiving new orders, which is an improvement to the situation they were in at the end of 2022 where they were forced to send some employees on short-term layoffs.
The group, which originates from Taiwan initially owned five textile manufacturing factories in Lesotho and employed over 12 000 workers, which made it the largest textile employer in Lesotho at the time.
However, due to the Covid-19-influenced retrenchments, its number of employees has gone down by more than half.
