Sete urges 4 million women to protect ‘meri blouse’ market

FASHION businesswoman Annette Sete says businesses involving fabric, cultural motifs, printing and garment sewing should be reserved for Papua New Guineans.
Sete said although they were in the reserved business list at the Investment Promotion Authority Act, Chinese-owned businesses were also producing fabric with PNG cultural motifs and sewing meri blouses.
Sete, who has already been in court with a number of Asian-owned businesses on the copyright issue, plans to raise awareness among women to claim the business back.
“Our fight is to get agencies to enforce the fact that it is a law for the sewing of garments and PNG cultural motifs on fabrics,” she said.
“Secondly, foreigners should not be selling meri blouses.”
According to her research, there are about 4 million women in PNG with about 1 million sewing and selling meri blouse.
She wants the market protected.
“I’ll be meeting with women who are in fashion, tailoring and fabric to discuss this,” she said.
“They can flag Chinese business in their area who are sewing and selling. We go through the normal process of identifying businesses, list them and take them to the provincial government or local commerce office and to the Micro, Small to Medium Enterprise (MSME) Council.
“If we stop them, we make money,” Sete said
“And there are ways to get there. It’s just that we haven’t been doing those things, so we don’t know.”