The Hindu : Front Page : Tirupur industry growing, at what cost?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 04, 2006

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Tirupur industry growing, at what cost?

M. Gunasekaran

Knitwear units have lured away agriculture, coir workers

POLLACHI: The growth of the Tirupur knitwear industry in leaps and bounds may augur well for the Government as it brings millions of dollars and makes exporters prosperous. But its rapid growth may hurt other sectors in the region.

The traditional agricultural sector struggles to find labourers in surrounding villages.

Harvest delayed

With the garment units sending buses and vans to the villages in a 50-km radius, even harvest of paddy and sugarcane is delayed for want of labour, farmers complain.

The coir industry of Pollachi, which is 65 km away from Tirupur, has been pushed to a corner.

"Of the 400 small and big coir fibre extraction units around Pollachi, only 100 are running now and they too are not operating at full capacity. Operating the units has become uneconomical mainly due to labour shortage, increasing wages and the slow movement of coir products in the northern States," says C.M. Kamaraj, Vice-Chairman of the Coir Board.

Raw material

Thanks to a normal monsoon, husk, primary raw material, is available in abundance and at a cheap cost. One thousand green husks are being supplied at Rs. 175, including transportation cost.

Normally the price is around Rs. 500 and sometimes it even crossed Rs. 1,000. Yet there are few takers, sources say.

An exporter, M. Hariraj of Coir-On points out that youngsters are averse to working in coir units as it entails hard labour and the environment may not be pleasing.

"We have increased the salary for men to Rs. 100 a day from Rs. 75 and to Rs. 90 from Rs. 65 for women. However, they are lured by Tirupur garment units that provide sophisticated work and transport on their doorstep," he adds.

Cluster development

For lack of modernisation for decades, the efforts to introduce a cluster development project to give a fillip to the coir industry with government aid are yet to take off.

Industry sources underline the importance of value addition and producing end products for survival. But this has not happened.

Quality consciousness may be another prerequisite. But this calls for huge investments, which are not forthcoming.

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