(MENAFN- The Post) MASERU – 'Matšepo Thakholi had been working at Leo Garments, a textile company in Maseru's industrial area of Ha-Thetsane since 2014, until she was retrenched in March last year.

Thakholi, a single mother raising a teenaged daughter, says she had to move back into her parents' house in Maseru as she could no longer afford to pay the M700 rent at her own place.

The decision to move back to her parents' house was the ultimate humiliation for a woman who prized her independence.

It was an admission that things had become hard for her.

The loss of my job hit me very hard, she tells thepost in an interview last week.

“I have lost all hope,” Thakholi says.“I have a child who is in high school who needs my support and I cannot provide for her.”

“I have now gone back to my parents' home because I cannot even buy a bag of maize-meal for myself and my child,” she says.

For the past six months, Thakholi has been going back to the factory, waiting outside with hundreds others, hoping she will re-hired.

But nothing has happened, with the company saying it too is struggling to stay afloat.

Ha-Thetsane at its peak was once a booming industrial zone housing scores of textile companies, producing clothes for the United States market and Europe.

The industrial area at one point boasted of over 30 000 factory workers.

Now it has been turned into a nucleus of despair.

The buzzing factory machines have gone quiet.

Thousands of unemployed youths now mill around the empty streets.

Street vendors, who once made enough to send their children to school, are now marooned in their shacks waiting for clients who never come.

Alina Mohlakoana is yet another victim of the jobs cutback in Lesotho's textile sector which at its peak employed over 35 000 workers.

She says she has been out of work for the past two months after the company she worked for, also retrenched workers.

Mohlakoana is raising two children.

“I have been coming here every day hoping to get back my job” Mohlakoana says.

Mohlakoana tried running a tuckshop but it collapsed shortly after because of lack of customers.
People have no buying power, she says.

Mohlakoana says one of the biggest challenges in running her business was theft.

“I have entirely given up, they would break into the tuckshop and steal cigarettes and airtime vouchers,” she says.
“They even break into our homes and steal groceries.”

'Matlotliso Selai, who was also retrenched from the textile companies, says she had resorted to selling fruits on the streets.

But the business has not been doing well, she says.

She has now resorted to collecting tin cans to sell at scrapyards, which gives her just a little to keep the wolf off the door.

“I had to collect tin cans and they have helped me pay my child's school fees,” Selai says.

She says she is unable to pay bills and buy food.

She too she has been going back to queue at the factories' gates for the past two months hoping she would get her job back.

“We just come here every day believing that one day we will be hired. But I am beginning to lose all hope,” she says.

'Mateboho Hlalele used to rent her houses to factory workers in Ha-Thetsane.

She says she has been experiencing a decline in rentals since the days of the Covid-19 pandemic, a decline that has worsened after the factory closures in the last two years.

Most of her former tenants moved out after they were retrenched.

Hlalele says the issue of textile firms retrenching workers has triggered a lot of crime and poverty.

“In one of the houses we found a lot of stolen electric copper cables,” Hlalele says says some houses in the area have also been turned into brothels, bringing social ills to the community.

Textile Insight, an international online magazine focusing on textile industry trends, reported in June last year that Lesotho's textile and apparel industry faced a stark decline, after it shed nearly 16 000 jobs from March 2018 to March 2024.

The magazine quoted Puseletso Makhakhe, the Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC) Corporate Investment and Trade Promotion General Manager, who was speaking at a workshop.

Makhakhe was outlining the sector's challenges, referring to a“reduced employment and shrinking export markets that have adversely affected the country's GDP”.

At the time there was a loss of 4 740 jobs in the textile industry between March 2023 and March 2024 alone,“primarily due to diminishing orders and economic uncertainties”.

Makhakhe highlighted the rising operational costs, disruptions in supply chains, and financial strains exacerbated by delayed VAT refunds as key contributors to Lesotho's textile sector woes.

Agoa says Lesotho used to export goods duty free to the United States under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

But earlier this year, President Donald Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on Lesotho but later suspended 40 percent of these tariffs pending negotiations.

“But as US buyers weigh the prospect of an imminent hefty tariff, new orders have dried up, forcing many garment factories in Lesotho to suspend production lines,” Agoa says.

Prime Minister Sam Matekane is under increasing pressure to provide jobs to thousands of desperate youths. He has pledged to generate jobs in the public and private sector starting from this month.

Matekane was reacting to a national outcry after thousands of youths thronged the army's recruitment centres last month. The army was only seeking to fill in 500 jobs.

Matekane recently told a jobs summit that his government will create 70 000 jobs in a few weeks.

Critics have however slammed Matekane's pledge saying it was a populist and reactionary plan that lacked the specifics of how he was going to create sustainable jobs for Lesotho's youths.

Lesotho's unemployment rate currently stands at 30.1 percent, according to a 2024 survey by the Bureau of Statistics.

Yet among the youths the unemployment rate is at 38.9 percent, 37.1 percent for women and 40.8 for women.
Those numbers could have however increased after the recent job losses in the factories.

Things could still get worse as more factories are wobbling due to the tariffs imposed by the US government.
As a result, anger at the government failures to provide jobs is beginning to rise.

“I wish the government would consider our stomachs too, instead of just filling theirs,” Selai says, highlighting a sentiment that the ruling elite is focusing on their own interests at the expense of the people.

Tau Tlali

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