Sunda International has laid off about 350 employees due to the shutdown of two manufacturing plants.
The company attributes this to the smuggling of substandard baby diapers into the country, estimating that 300 million pieces are smuggled in annually.
The company met with the Trade and Industry Committee of Parliament, requesting action to address the issue.
According to Managing Director of Sunda International, Wei Ye, a policy framework must be enacted to declare such practices as national security and health threats.
“Although the FDA, GSA and Customs Division have supported us a lot, this is just a drop of water because they are everywhere. A policy is needed to stop that kind of importation. What is pitiful is that because of that, at the end of 2022 and 2023, we had to dismantle two production lines.
“We are meant to send them home. One production line we sent to Uganda, one we sent to Nigeria. Why couldn’t we have left it here and kept producing? These are the challenges,” he said.
The Chairman of the Trade and Industry Committee of Parliament, Alexander Roosevelt, assured the committee of its resolve to help tackle the crisis to boost their operations.
“We must take this issue seriously. Now that they have promised to maybe bring back three new production lines which will employ 400 people, there is a need for us as a committee to go back and speak about this bottleneck so that the moment they are removed, they can expand,” he said.
