The Sri Lankan General Secretary of the Free Trade Zones and General Services Employees’ Union (FTZ & GSEU), Anton Marcus, announced that the loss the European Union’s Generalised System of Preference Plus (GSP+) concessions to Sri Lanka has forced over 186 garment factories to close.
The trade union leader said that the number of factories had reduced from 835 to 500, resulting in the number of employees in the industry falling from 1 million to 283,000.
The European Union suspended the GSP+ tariff in 2010, due to the Sri Lankan state’s failure to adhere with the fundamental human rights conventions that is expected of all recipients of the concession.
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