WITH less than a week before the reopening of schools islandwide, several Corporate Area institutions are struggling to meet demands for uniforms with at least one major supplier blaming the issue on labour shortages.

“My biggest challenge is labour, I cannot find workers, that’s the problem. I have the orders, I have fabric to supply the orders, but I cannot find workers. I can’t produce the volumes because I don’t have the people,” head of one garment factory which has been in the industry some four decades told the Jamaica Observer on Thursday.

“I need stitchers, anybody from the garment industry; Garmex says they have none. We need tailors, there are no tailors; we have become a nation of merchants bringing down ourselves, so that’s the challenge we have,” the business owner said.

According to the business owner, prior to 2019 the entity did not have many challenges filling orders.

“To be honest, this year we have been really affected. I lost two employees; they died and I have not been able to replace them. And no matter how we reach out, nobody is interested. Even the casual workers come in for a day or two or a week and then they are gone, so that is the problem,” she stated. Before COVID everything was okay, but I don’t know what COVID did to this country,” she said.

Asked what her client base was, she said it was “wide enough”.

On Thursday an administrator at a preparatory school told the Observer that some difficulties were being experienced from the supply side.

“We have a similar challenge but not as dire, so we would have gotten some uniforms. We put in our orders early, so we are in fairly good stead,” the individual said, noting that it could be that other schools had submitted their orders late.

An administrator at another preparatory school told the Observer that some parents had complained that the supplier used by the school had no uniforms.

At the same time, one school, which is experiencing issues with uniform supplies, in a notice to parents on Thursday, said the challenge is being experienced by many schools islandwide because of logistics and shipping issues, which should be rectified in another two weeks.