Bortex chairman Lino Spiteri should say why many Bortex clothes have for 25 years been made by people trafficked into slavery
I eagerly await Bortex chairman (and former Labour minister of finance) Lino Spiteri’s column in Times of Malta or The Sunday Times, on the subject of indentured servitude/slavery of trafficked Chinese workers at Leisure Clothing, which made clothes for Bortex for 25 years and is making them still.
Seven years ago, Bortex closed down its factory in Malta, laid off its Maltese workers, and vacated its Bulebel factory. Leisure Clothing immediately moved in instead with its Chinese slaves, and carried right on making the same clothes Bortex had been making…for Bortex.
Didn’t Lino Spiteri do the maths? If Bortex couldn’t carry on because its prices were not competitive with Maltese employees, how did the same clothes, made in the same place, suddenly become competitively priced when made by Chinese people and with Bortex’s commission tacked on top of that (the clothes were produced for big European brands)?
Lino Spiteri has been associated with Bortex for long years. When he was not serving as minister in the cabinets of Dom Mintoff, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (now that’s really something to boast about) or resigning from Alfred Sant’s, he was director and consultant to Bortex and was some time ago made its chairman.
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And I have always considered him as a worthy candidate for “santo subito” .
You must be joking, have you forgotten the times when restricted import quotas could be bough. Sure Mr Spiteri could elaborate on the subject.
Lino Spiteri is in very poor health and is unlikely to be in a position to write a column for a while yet.
You what that means in Malta. His sins are automatically washed away by a stream of Get Well Soon Lino messages.
Yes, like when someone passes away, all his sins or misdemeneours are automatically forgiven. Did the same happen to Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler nor Joseph Mengele ?
The chickens are coming home to roost, big time this time. My sympathy with the Chinese workers who were at the mercy of such exploiters and slave-drivers. Big impostors. Leeches and parasites in fine designer suits.
Now you will understand what makes globalization the horror it’s become.
Refusing to trade with a totalitarian regime isn’t turning the clock back.
Not when this is hijacked by terzomondisti who’ll do anything to dispute western rights and values.
Liberty is essential to an economy.
Now you try telling them that at Il-Konferenza Ideat. And you said I wouldn’t be booed off the stage?
It was a konvenzjoni. tsk.
Sometimes I think it’s better to buy cheap imitation products than buying the real thing since the real-thing industry employs slaves. It’s no honour wearing branded products if producing them involves enslaving people.
Brilliant conclusion – go figure!
Neapolitans, bless their inventive, have taken to fake Made in China.
They’ll also sell you sealed empty jam jars labelled aria di Napoli and will provide T-shirts with a printed seatbelt in any colour to match your car’s.
The solution is knowledge – knowledge of the product and the production company. I can easily give you half a dozen trusted brands for any product*, where no Chinese labour is used.
*Except computers. There, I’m afraid, everything is made and assembled in China.
I am still perplexed, Daphne, as to why previous PN administrations never took any action to stop this slave-labour factory.
Was there any attempt at all by the PN governments to investigate this factory? And if there was no attempt whatsoever, do you think there was any particular reason as to why they did not investigate this factory?
Daphne tista tghidli please jekk l,owners tal bortex humiex l-istess owners tal plevna hotel. grazzi.
[Daphne – Iva. Karen Bugeja nee Borg, oht Peter Borg, li hija direttur ta’ Bortex.]
Oh yes, Karen Bugeja nee Borg, the wannabe businesswoman who managed to shrink her daddy’s tourism empire to just one hotel, the Plevna. And for her abilities, she now sits (again) on the Air Malta Board of Directors.
Someone should ask her about the time a couple of years ago when she installed a laundry underground at the Plevna hotel and made employees work in conditions of extreme heat and humidity. She disdainfully ignored pleas to fix the place up, until a few of the employees collapsed and had to be seen by doctors.
Another socjalista taparsi, insomma.
Grazzi tar-risposta. Ghamilt zmien nahdem il-Plevna hotel u nista nisvela li l-policy taghhom hija li jahdmu bil-part timers kwazi kollha barranin.
Veru li hafna lukandi u restoranti jaghmlu l-istess, pero l-Plevna ilhom bdin il-policy ghal hafna hafna zmien. Union qatt ma ezistiet u naf sew hafna li min ipprova jorganizza xi forma ta’ house union spicca biex tkecca jew bl-iskuza ta’ early retirement.
Tassew. Hotel tal-qamel.
I have always wondered why the labels don’t state where they are made. The last time I was at the shop I asked, quite innocently, where they were making them these days and if production had been outsourced to Tunisia. The response was: ‘ehe ehe, I think they make them somewhere else now but I don’t know exactly.’
If the salesgirl / salesboy doesn’t know the basic details of the items for sale in the shop he works in, then there’s something seriously wrong.
For a company that boasts about its quality, one would expect that the board of directors would have visited Leisure Clothing, where the actual production line was, time and time again.
I didn’t believe for a minute that they do not know what was going on. I guess it is too easy to turn a blind eye when your profit margins are going to be increased. This is beyond reprehensible.
I always considered a real hypocrite.
All we need to know is to which countries are the Chinese Bortex clothes exported.
I nearly forgot one important detail. How is it that Bortex are keeping the same factory space in Marsa, they had seven years ago when they employed hundreds of employees?
What rent agreement do they have with MIP?
Gahan, there are two large factories in Marsa alone. One is a retail outlet and the other is used as a store. This contravenes the conditions for use as factories.
This is Maltese opportunist politics at its worst. I used to get physically sick watching Joe Grima and Lino Spiteri on Net TV. Now this boy scout has cottoned on to what the Maltese electorate relish and the boot is on the other foot with Bondi and Co.
Min jaf fi zmien il-Labour ta’ Mintoff kemm fottew bil-licenzji tal-importazzjoni, exchange control, permessi, jimportaw mic-Cina u ghal taparsi jahdmuhom Malta kemm iwahhlu “Made in Malta”.
Lino Spiteri even had two sides to life within his own home: literally concealing the luxurious part so that other Maltese mortals don’t see it.
These people have duplicity oozing out of every pore.