Dressmakers in the Shama District of the Western Region have lamented the low patronage of their services during this year’s yuletide.

They attributed the situation to the sudden occurrence of COVID-19 pandemic, which they said had caused a sharp decline in their services and sales compared to the same period last year.

Some of the dressmakers who shared their sentiments with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) recounted how the COVID-19 had affected their businesses, claimed that this year was worst.

“We are all feeling the impact of COVID-19. The truth is that most of our customers either cannot get money to buy clothes or even if they have the cloths, they did not have money to sew it”, they stated.

Ms Faustina Etrue- Dadzie, a dressmaker at Inchanban said though COVID-19 brought unexpected difficulties to the dressmaking business, she was somehow lucky to meet her expectations halfway.

She said many of the residents in Shama and its environs suffered from the uncertainty of a lockdown in the Western Region, thereby making them to be extra cautious on how they spent their money especially on clothes.

Mr Lawrence Krah and Ms Vida Anderson, both dressmakers acknowledged that their businesses were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and explained that for the fear of contracting the deadly disease, many of their customers were unable to regularly visit them for business.

The dressmakers feared that COVID-19 could gradually collapse their business because of the strict protocols.

They said COVID-19 had worsened their plights as they continued to incur huge electricity bills while they were unable to rake in enough profits to settle them.

The situation, they said had triggered the disconnection of electricity thereby compounding their predicaments.

The dressmakers appealed to the government to be more proactive in dealing with the pandemic to save their businesses from collapse.