In order to improve the quality of clothing that Ugandans buy and reduce on the imports of sub-standard wear, the Uganda National Council of Science and technology (UNCST) is set to invest 500 million to collect data on the different body shapes and sizes from each of 54 tribes of Ugandans.
According to Dr. Patrick Martin Ongol, the acting Director of the UNCST, the data will be collected from at least 10,000 Ugandans and will be used to populate a database for the fashion and design industry.
Commenting on this, Olive Najjuma, a Presenter of The Fatboy Show said, “Women will always struggle to find fitting clothes so if you ask me if the investment of 500 million shillings is worth it, it is not,” she said.
She added, “Even when you go to a tailor and you’re measured for an item of clothing, you’ll go back for the finished product and most times you will need readjustments in the form of tightening or loosening.”
Her Co-host Fatboy, also not convinced about the end goal of the research, remarked, “This looks quite moot. I mean 500 million shillings just to collect data that one is fat, another is tall and the other thin? Isn't there a better use of money than glorifying an ogling session of women? Because that is what it looks like,”
Olive more so added, “You will always find that no two body shapes are the same, you can find two ladies of the same size but two different shapes so are they going to measure us all? It looks like a glorified way of squandering money.”
According to Ongol, the data will be acquired from tailors first and generated into a computerized system before coming up with the sizes and shapes of clothes.
The research meant to better Uganda’s fashion and design industry was revealed by Ongol in his remarks during the Parliament’s Presidential Affairs Committee visit to the National Science, Technology, Engineering and Innovation Skills Enhancement project at Namanve Industrial Park.
The Fatboy show is hosted by James Onen aka Fatboy, Olive, Sarah and Lesham every weekday from 6am to 10am on RX Radio.