Quality school uniforms soon to be ready

This year, the Employment Support Fund as well as the Small and Medium Enterprises Support Fund provided 17 billion MNT and six billion MNT, respectively, worth of soft loans to general education school uniform manufacturers with the condition of repayment totaling 23 billion MNT. Currently, there is a total demand for 520,000 sets of uniform but factories have only received an order for 400,000. The Ministry of Factory and Agriculture (MFA) is now in charge of manufacturing and fully supplying uniforms made with domestic wool and yarn by local manufacturers to the students.

To check on the progress of this project, MFA State Secretary-General Kh.Zoljargal visited the factories with journalists on August 8. The first factory to introduce its activities was the Mon Forte company which is responsible for separating and processing coarse wool fleece, as well as spinning thread for uniform manufacturing. The factory is planning to finish 5.7 tons of spun thread before September 15. As of August 8, it prepared 1.7 tons and distributed 1.4 of them to knitting factories. It has been operating 24 hours a day and is spinning 20 tons of thread every 15 days. When State Secretary-General Kh.Zoljargal and journalists visited the factory, it was preparing to send 800 kilograms of wool to Orkhon Province to be dyed there. Factory officials noted that the thread for manufacturing sleeveless shirts and vests as the students’ uniform is only ready after undergoing five to six processing stages in the factory. Mon Forte Director S.Otgonbat said, “One kilogram of woolen thread costs 30,470 MNT with Value Added Tax. Our factory usually separates and processes camel wool, but we are doing these aside and are working on sheep wool for the sake of uniform manufacturing.”

The delegates were also introduced to how these sleeveless shirts and vests are made. One of several tailoring factories inside a building of the Mongol Nekhmel company, the Mungun Pyramid knitting factory, received an order to manufacture 4,000 sleeveless shirts and 5,000 vests, and is planning to finish them by September 15 given that it has six subsidiary factories. Mungun Pyramid Director D.Nurgeemaa stated, “We earn a 700-MNT profit from each shirt. From this, we provide our workers their salaries as well as pay our power bills and rent, apparently leaving us with no spare profit. But we are supporting our government’s project to supply high quality uniforms made in Mongolia to the students. Our children should wear decent and high quality clothes. Some parents criticize us that the cost of the uniform is too expensive. But we believe it is far better to buy one complete set instead of purchasing low quality and cheap clothes imported from Erenhot. We do not understand why they are so upset to buy a uniform of high quality yet they buy their children very expensive phones or sneakers.”

After that visit, the delegates went to the Oulen Mench tailoring factory. As textile manufacturing factory equipment has not been imported yet, the factory has ordered textiles made in Korea with the standard Woolmark trademark for sewing uniforms. The factory is responsible for sewing all shirts as uniform and, when the delegates visited, shirts for 1st to 3rd graders were being sewn. By August 25, the first set of uniform for them will be distributed.

Oulen Mench has started its operations not only in Songinokhairkhan and Sukhbaatar Districts of Ulaanbaatar, but also in Umnugovi, Dornogovi, Dundgovi, Arkhangai, and Zavkhan Provinces.

Its CEO Ch.Buyanbaatar mentioned, “Our company has experience in importing our products to the United States. Though we have 400 positions available in our company, only 30 percent of our labor force is working. The textile we are using is of world standard. The shirts we are manufacturing are of cotton wool which is very comfortable for the students. In other words, our shirt’s material is very similar to the clothing for newborn babies.” The company’s tailors also highlighted the good quality of their shirts.

The journalists asked State Secretary-General Kh.Zoljargal about an update on this uniform manufacturing project in which he replied, “I visited the factories to witness the project’s progress with my own eyes. General manufacturing has started, but it is rather disorderly now. The good news is that the sets of uniform for 1st to 3rd graders will be distributed soon, and middle school students will receive theirs from September 15. By September 30, high school students will have their uniforms ready as scheduled.”

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