WESTERN BUREAU – Six hundred and seventy workers in western Jamaica will be without jobs in another three weeks when the Hart Group of Companies wind up operations at its remaining garment factory in the Montego Bay Free Zone.

The factory – Sportswear Producers Number Three – is a cut, make and trim operation that makes 52,000 dozens Hanes T-shirts weekly for the US firm Sara Lee.

Mark Hart, CEO of the Hart Group, said the planned closure of the garment factory is due to his company’s inability to compete with garment manufacturing companies in the international market, particularly in the Far East.

“The US is pretty much opening up textiles, and textiles imports to the States (US) is unrestricted, so there is definitely a move towards China and other East Asia low-cost producing countries,” Hart told the Observer. The Hart Group, he added, cannot exist with such a competition.

Sportswear Producers Number Three is one of three garment factories that was set up by the Hart Group during the boom in the sector in the 1980s.

However, the company was forced to shut two of the companies that crumbled under a collapse of the 807 garment sector.

The first to close its doors was Sports Wear Number Two, which was shut down in 2000 and left 440 people out of work. Two years later, in 2002, the group closed its Sports Wear Number One factory, also located in the Free Zone, sending 400 persons to join the employment line.

Falling sales were blamed for the closure of the two factories.

Two Oneita garment and the Akom garment factory, which also operated in Montego Bay, closed their operations a few years ago, leaving hundreds of people in western Jamaica out of work.

More than 20,000 garment sector jobs were lost islandwide between the 1990 and early 2000.

Hart said yesterday that his company, from as early as 2002, had warned its workers at Sportswear Producers Number Three of the severe implications that the move by the US administration would have on the company.

Yesterday, Hart said his company had entered in an agreement with the HEART/NTA, which will be providing certification courses for some of the employees who will be displaced.

These courses, he argued, would prepare the workers for the expected boom in the tourism sector, particularly in the northwestern region of the island.

“We believe that there is some optimism in the economy; and with all the hotels to be built, there will be some opportunities for the workers to support the new investments,” the Hart Group CEO said.

In the meantime, he said the company is likely to invest in the information technology (IT) sector, as the garment industry is not poised for any growth.

“We are looking at the IT sector; we still have something that we are looking at, but nothing has been finalised as yet,” Hart told the Observer.

But he said the group was considering the building of a facility in the Montego Bay Free Zone to house an existing IT company, and was also examining a proposal to operate an IT company.