SOE making life harder for designer

PAPUA New Guineans involved in the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector are being hit hard by the two-month extended state of emergency, says seamstress Janet Akis.
Akis, 44, from Southern Highlands and Chimbu runs a small business in Lae and is a designer and seamstress.
She sews clothes and sells them to meet her family’s daily needs and other necessities.
Akis told The National that she sells her items at an open space located in Lae’s Top Town where she had obtained a licence from the city council to sell her products.
Her customers are mostly tourists and the working class.
The products she sells are dresses, matching outfits, meri blouses, children’s clothing, string bilums.
She also sews customised pieces.
Akis said with the coronavirus pandemic and associated impacts, small businesses had been badly affected particularly with market places closed and a restriction on selling in public areas.
“We’re finding it difficult to sell as we are not making enough to sustain ourselves,” she said.
“We cannot afford to assist our children who are in higher learning institutions like universities because what we earn is not enough to cater for them as well.”
She told The National from her home at 10th Street that she was not sewing as many dresses as she used to because she was not getting enough customers.
“Some of the SMEs, especially the mothers at grassroots level, don’t benefit from SME allocations that the Government continues to talk about.
“Officers from the government should step out and educate us mothers how we can access those funds as it does not reach us at the grassroots level.”