Troubles Come Out In The Russian Wash

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30424, 24 April 1964, Page 2

Troubles Come Out In The Russian Wash

<.V Z PA.-Reuter—Copyright)

MOSCOW. Russian consumers are tired of shoddily-made clothes and laundries which take too long to wash them. Clothes lie unsold on shelves because they are badly made and laundries do not get enough work because the service they provide is too slow, says a recent edition of the Russian “Economic Gazette.”

It said that a new Moscow laundry which i ■worked at only 30 per cent of its capacity | was typical, and i urged the need for I jnore advertising and more collection points. I Stocks of unsold clothes In ■ shops in the Russian Federation rose by more than £3O million in the first half of last year and stood at nearly £1,150 million by the middle of the year. Out of 150,000 people who visited Moscow’s big depart-' naent store, G.U.M., on Red square every day, only 50,000 bought anything. They could afford to buy, but could not find what they wanted, the newspaper said. It was a similar tale with, the laundries. People who now have to queue and wait between 10 and 12 days for their washing would make much more use of the service if they knew that the work would be done in one or two days. A new “Snowflake” laundry in the city, which only takes

one day, is doing a roaring | trade, according to the news-i paper. Trade Ministry officials inspecting clothes found that one third of the articles which they saw in the first half of the" year were defective, and many more had to be downgraded to a lower quality. A total of 84 factories had been banned from selling their clothes until defects had been removed. The newspaper said one, in the Moscow area, made school uniform trousers with one leg longer than the other. Another factory, at Sverdlovsk, had nearly 95 per cent of its men’s coats returned for re-making. The “Economic Gazette” said that it had been calculated that Moscow’s laundries .could wash 160,000 tons of ! linen a year if they worked in i three shifts, giving Muscovites some 601 b of washing a head ’ each year, instead of last 'year’s average of 131 b. “Not Guilty” When questioned by a correspondent about the single shift working, the authorities explained: “We are not guilty. It is the people of Moscow

who do not bring linen to laundries in the necessary quantities.” The newspaper castigated local officials who do not think of how to provide fulltime work for big laundries, thus making the State’s investments unprofitable and failing to provide Muscovites with a service.

The answer lies not in the organisation of the laundry firm but in more advertising to make the service better known and in setting up more collection points, which are very scarce in big housing areas.

The “Economic Gazette” asked officials in contact with industry and trade why the position in the sewing industry was so bad and what was to be done about it One official, connected with the State Committee on Light Industry, declined to answer these questions because the committee was still young and “has not accumulated the necessary material.”

Economic Approach The newspaper’s corespondent also sought to answer the economic approach to the problem by the industrial goods laboratory of the research institute of trade and public feeding, but he had been disappointed.

When he asked the head of the laboratory. Comrade Trakhtenberg, whether his organisation had any concrete plans, he was told: “You know, we have not dealt with these questions. It is only now, at the request of the chairman Of the State Committee on Light Industry . . . that we have included in the institute’s plan for 1964 the subject demand and the basis of orders to industry for Clothes.” They will work this out with other research institutes, he added, “But I do not know what the institute will get out of this.” The correspondent asked him if he had already spoken to these other bodies, to which he replied: “No.”