IT was recently reported in the media that textile mills in Pakistan mull moving to Vietnam to avoid local high cost. Many textile companies have already closed down.

I chuckle at such fake reports because Vietnam doesn’t have free labour anymore and many companies are planning on moving to a new country with trained cheap labour.

If the government promotes cheap and textile industry-trained labour and help new companies purchase land, construct buildings, complete paperwork and hire local labour, we can attract many professional textile companies to setup in Pakistan.

The Pakistani textile companies should understand that the incentives they had for the past many years are gone. Their duplicity of losing money and jobs in textile industry will not work anymore, especially with shopping malls, residential buildings and offshore accounts that are ironically kept in the name of textile companies — all belie their claims.

The media should also call a spade a spade and stop printing such fake reports where big industries use fake information to threaten and scare the government into giving it incentives.

Dr Rohail Baseer
Peshawar

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2019