The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Forum to protect interests of weavers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 30, 2005

Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Forum to protect interests of weavers

Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A forum to protect the interests of traditional handloom workers has come up in Balaramapuram, a weavers' town on the outskirts of the State capital. The Handloom Weavers Protection Forum aims at creating awareness about the activities of a section of fake cooperative societies that misappropriate the funds spent by the State and Central Governments for weavers' welfare.

President of the forum N. Viswambharan said it would pressure the authorities concerned to conduct an authentic census of the actual weavers in the district and issue separate identity cards for those weaving on their own looms and casual weavers who work for others. The forum would strive to expose the activities of a section of fake handloom societies that purchased cloth from other States and passed it off as their own in order to claim false sales rebate from the Government. The bulk of the 296 registered handloom cooperative societies functioning in the district were "paper societies" that did not have weavers on the rolls, Mr. Viswambharan said. In Venganoor panchayat, for instance, there were 38 handloom societies that together claimed a membership of 6,000 weavers. However, there were only 250 weavers in the panchayat, out of whom only 80 owned their own looms.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Kerala