The Hindu : Front Page : 2,000 handlooms idling at Chennimalai

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 25, 2007
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2,000 handlooms idling at Chennimalai

R. Sundaram

— Photo: M. Govarthan

FUTURE BLEAK: A handloom lying idle at Chennimalai.

ERODE: About 2,000 handlooms have gone silent in their region owing to paucity of manpower and want of export orders, a member of a weavers’ cooperative society at Chennimalai said on Wednesday, reflecting the larger crisis facing the local industry.

Chennimalai is known for its well-designed bedsheets, bedspreads and towels.

Over 5,000 handlooms and more than 10,000 powerlooms function in and around Chennimalai. A handloom weaver can work only on handloom.

Similarly, it is impossible for a powerloom weaver to adapt to a handloom. In the handloom sector only experienced and aged weavers work. Youngsters are reluctant to work in handloom units.

Instead, they go to hosiery units located 35 km away. Hence, the handlooms at Chennimalai are idling.

Further, export orders are shrinking for Chennimalai weavers by the day.

A weaver said the weavers’ cooperatives in Chennimalai used to get export weaving orders from textile mill owners in Karur. The owners supplied the yarn and the design and paid their wages.

But abruptly the Karur exporters stopped giving orders to the handloom weavers saying they were not doing it on handlooms. They said the weavers’ societies gave the yarn to powerlooms, which made the products and sent them to exporters as having been produced in handloom units. Now the exporters have again started giving orders to the handloom weavers but they have cut the wages. A weaver is now losing a minimum of Rs. 50 in wages.

So they do not want to take up the work. A weavers’ cooperative official said more than 2,000 handlooms at Chennimalai were idling.

Usually, a weaver produces each day in a loom bedsheets worth Rs. 300 to Rs. 500.

Fabric worth Rs. 15 lakh to Rs. 25 lakh used to be produced in handlooms every day. But now production has come down to Rs. 9 lakh to Rs.15 lakh-worth. Because of this there is a production loss of Rs. 3 crore a month.

The weavers have requested the Government to start a handloom weaving centre at Chennimalai to benefit future generations.

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