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| Mitumba Zikiuzwa Dar es Salaam |
Wadau leo kwenye taarifa ya habari wanasema kuwa Mitumba inazuia maendeleo Afrika. Tanzania imetajwa kama nchi mojawapo iliyoathrika na balaa ya mitumba. Wanasema kuwa viwanda kama Urafiki, Mwatex, zinakufa shauri ya mitumba! Ni kweli! Watu wanataka mitumba ili wavae kizungu. Hawana taimu na kushona nguo ya kishamba.
Sasa kuna watu Marekanu ambao wanataka watu wasitoe nguo zao za zamani kwa hao wanaziuza Afrika! Oh hooooo!
Mnakumbuka enzi za Mwalimu mitumba ilikuwa maarufu! Walikuwa wanaita mitumab Kafa Ulaya. Baadaye ndo waliruhusu mitumba kuuzwa. Mnaweza kusoma habari kamili kwa KUBOFYA HAPA:
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Your old shirts could wind up at a market like this one, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Thomas Lohnes/Getty … Cleaning out your
closets and getting organized for spring is a great feeling — and so is
seeing the piles of old clothes you've ignored for years bagged and
ready for donation. Between the space you’ve just created in your own
life, and the perfectly good clothing you’re about to bestow on others
through a charity like Goodwill or the Salvation Army, it’s pretty much a
win-win situation. Right? Not necessarily. That’s because the castoffs
you think are doing so much good are more likely being sold at a profit
in Africa — part of an elaborate overseas resale system that’s
effectively snuffing out other countries’ own vital textile industries.
“Most
Americans are thoroughly convinced there is another person in their
direct vicinity who truly needs and wants our unwanted clothes. This
couldn’t be further from the truth,”
writes Elizabeth Cline
in “Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion.” “Charities
long ago passed the point of being able to sell all of our wearable
unwanted clothes,” she notes.
According to sustainable apparel consultant
Shannon Whitehead,
here is what actually happens to your old suits, shirts, and sweaters —
part of the 4.7 billion pounds of clothing donated by Americans
annually — once you shove them into that big metal drop box: Some of the
items end up in landfills; some of them get recycled into rags and
insulation; and much of the clothing ends up in the markets of
sub-Saharan Africa. When they arrive at charity shops, the clothes are
sorted, with only about 10 percent deemed good enough for sale in the
retail shop; the rest is sold to textile recyclers, which ship tons of
clothing in good enough shape for resale to countries including Ghana,
Cameroon, Congo,
Tanzania, and Rwanda.
So
on one hand, you could feel OK about the fact that the profit for the
tons of castoffs is going to support valuable social programs run by the
charities — programs for seniors, single moms needing work, families
living in poverty, people in drug rehab, prison populations, and
homeless people. But on the other hand, there’s the worrisome viewpoint
that, at the same time, the cycle of shipping used clothes overseas is
contributing to growing poverty in other nations. That's because, as
more and more of our clothing discards are sent overseas, there's less
chance that African countries will develop their own textile trades. In
the past decade, in fact, local industries such as garment-making and
tailoring, have collapsed, creating mass unemployment.
“It’s neocolonialism in its purest form,”
noted
the late Neil Kearney, general secretary for the International Textile,
Garment and Leather Workers Federation. “It’s exporting poverty to
Africa, a continent that is already exceedingly poor.”
Further, a recent article in
the Root points
out:“The psychological — and, as a result, financial — blows of the
used-clothing industry have been crippling. What seems to be carried
over, along with the previously worn clothing, is that old-colonial
mentality of ‘ours is better than yours,’ the often unspoken belief
heralding all that is Western as superior, and all that is African as
inferior.”
So what’s a spring cleaner to do? If you don’t want
to be a part of the overseas consignment market, here are some other
used-clothing recipients to consider:
• You can give used business attire to organizations such as
Career Gear or the
Women’s Alliance, which provide interview-worthy outfits to disadvantaged individuals seeking employment.
READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE:
