A leading manufacturer in home appliances and health care equipment, Philips,has said that inconsistency in the policies of the federal government was responsible for the closure of its factory in Nigeria.
The executive chairman, Philips Project Centre, Mr. Biodun Disu, stated this recently while addressing journalists on how healthcare and lighting solutions could improve the quality of life in Africa.
His words: “We had a Philips factory manufacturing television, radio, iron and all manners of things.
We had over 2,000 people working in our factory. We shut down the factory due to policy inconsistency by different administrations. This factory is no longer in existence.
It was much easier to smuggle goods into the country. For now manufacturing is not part of our agenda in this company.”
The district and general manager, Philips, in Africa, Mr. Roelof Assies, said over eight million children and over five hundred thousand mothers around the world die each year from preventable complications related to pregnancy and child birth.
“As many developed countries are struggling to stimulate economic growth, a strong middle class of 313 million, or 34 per cent of the African population, is on the rise in what is still considered the world’s most impoverished continent,” he said.
According to him, over 700 children die everyday in Nigeria for lack of health care.
The federal government, in collaboration with Philips was providing a broad range of advanced healthcare equipment in different hospitals in the country.
The equipment included: Six state-of-the-art computed tomography (CT) scanners; eight digital mammography systems and 17 ultrasound systems, throughout the country in 2011.
The company has also introduced the new LED light, which can be charged by solar or hand cranking.
“Today an estimated 560 million Africans live without electricity. For these people, night time means either darkness or flickering light of a candle or kerosene lamp.
However the disadvantages of kerosene lanterns are many, including safety and health risks, high costs due to link with oil prices. And the light output are always low,” he added.
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