Grand plans for local designers

The Youth Sports and Culture ministry has big plans for local designers and dress makers. Minister Thapelo Olopeng has promised to speak to shop owners in Botswana about stocking clothes made by local designers.

At a meeting with fashion designers, dress makers and models at the Botswana Public Service College, Olopeng advised tailors and dressmakers against making garments of low quality.

He said he could only succeed in his crusade to convince local shop owners to buy their products if they also produce the best quality to stand a fighting chance against suppliers and companies from other countries.

He also advised them to have confidence in merchandise made locally saying he had realised during his countrywide tours of local factories that some of it was as comparable quality to that made outside the country.

Olopeng said that his office was in the process of acquiring land where they would set up a top quality market for designers and dressmakers to rent out and sell their merchandise.

Olopeng’s office also intends to set up an office which would manage all the beauty pageants in Botswana. Such an office would start first with Miss Botswana, Miss Universe and Miss Africa Botswana.

This office would set up standards in which beauty pageants would have to comply with in order to raise the standard of beauty pageants in the country.
The minister’s audience also aired its concerns. Model Maina Thapedi complained of the high exploitation of models by modelling agencies.

Fashion designer Gabriel Maphane complained of too much red tape in accessing the ministry, to which Olopeng concurred but promised they were rooting out the impediment.

Others complained that importing leather is too expensive and wondered if the leather tannery in Phakalane was closed. Olopeng attributed the closure to water shortage in the country and said they were preparing to set up another leather tannery in Lobatse.