About 1400 workers of the Juapong Textiles Factory in the Volta Region have been asked to go home, JoyNews has learnt.

The job cut comes after power supply to the grey baft-producing company was cut following failure of the company’s management to pay its huge electricity bills reported to be around 20 million cedis.

The company has not had power for the past three weeks. Workers of the company say they are in dire financial need.

The woes of Juapong textile has been a long standing problem.

The company has not been able to secure a reported 15 million cedis worth of capital to revamp its operations.

Efforts to reach the management for a reaction on the operational challenges have proved futile.

Secretary-General of the Textiles Workers Union Abraham Koomsom points out that the major cause of the company’s decline was the pirating of designs in the textiles industry.

The cheap imported designs from China made it very difficult for the company to break-even, Koomson argued.

Grey-baft which is the raw material processed to make textiles makes the eventual design uncompetitive compared to the cheap imports.

“That is why no investor would want to put in money. Nobody would do it”, he said.

He said not even a take-over of Juapong Textiles by the Trade Ministry could save the company.

The trade unionist warned that if government does not address the central problem of piracy, Juapong Textiles and other textiles companies will not stand a chance.

He urged the workers to emulate their Nigerian counterparts and demonstrate daily to draw government attention to piracy.

Abraham Koomson said he is willing to help the workers organize daily protests.