The Tamil Nadu Textile Ministry officials have decided to take a leaf from the book of co-operative agricultural bodies for marketing the produce directly without any middle men by ensuring value addition. The plan is to create weaver companies for small power loom weavers. Our plan is intended at weeding out middlemen and increasing the capacity and income of small weavers, Ministry officials disclosed.
The business potential of Tamil Nadu weavers gets restricted as the middlemen source cheap raw material from the State and sell it elsewhere. In short, the middlemen reduce the scope of business of the small powerloom weavers.
M Balasubramanian, Deputy Director at the regional office of the Textile Commissioner in Coimbatore, in a statement explained, “Middlemen place bulk orders of around 10,000 mn or more to master weavers, who in turn outsource it to smaller power loom weavers. The small weavers are paid daily wages. This has made the weavers dependent on these job orders and has been stopping them from realizing their full potential. Those small weavers who buy yarn and weave grey fabric for individual orders too don’t have ready investment prospects as they have to wait 120 days to get the payment.”
Balasubramanian further said, “If these small time power loom weavers are able to get big orders and perform their own value addition, it would improve their financial prospects and marketing will be easy for them.”
The Union Textile Ministry has received a proposal seeking support for small power loom weavers to set up their own companies in the region. The response has been good with nine weaver clusters volunteering to form companies. As per the records, each cluster has 500 power looms and 1200 beneficiaries.
