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Sunday, Sep 07, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Poor tailors toiling hard to mend their lives

The labourers’ inability to make both ends meet has cost their livelihood dear pushing the trade into peril

Cut and mend: Tailors at work in a stitching unit of a textile export firm in Karur.

Their wheels of fortune have not exactly come a full circle. In fact, the helm of the tailors working in the numerous stitching, tailoring and embroidery units as also those attached to the regular textile export units in Karur has got stuck with the wages not having been revised for some years now.

However, their want and demand have gone up drastically like the prices of essentials over the past year. Their inability to make ends meet has cost their livelihood dear, pushing their trade into peril.

The tailors’ kismet is tied to that of the textile export units in and around Karur town. In the recent past, the textile industry had to counter many a storm in the form of dollar value depreciation, fluctuating yarn price, labour and manpower shortage, high inflation levels and power crisis.

Every time the industry takes hits , the numerous men and women, skilled and unskilled labourers that the make the industry suffer the brunt.

Sinking income

An estimated 20,000 tailors and master cutters are employed in the stitching and tailoring units of the town. A crafted tailor was able to earn over Rs. 1,000 a week till about some months back. But the situation has turned now, whereby with the same skills, he is able to earn only Rs. 500 a week. Both men and women work in shifts to take care of the sewing needs of the exporters.

While many of them work in units attached to the export firms, a vast majority of them are employed with specialized stitching units that abound in the town where they undertake job works on piece meal rate.

The problems of labourers are tied to loss of jobs and consequently the loss of earning. But the plight of the tailors who had set up stitching units is a bit queer.

The setbacks are eating into their pockets, ending not just with loss but taking away what ever had been earned by interest for the advance through which they have bought their sewing machines.

Wages remain unchanged

“Our wages have remained what they were in the past, not matching the current price rise. Dwindling orders, rising prices, high input costs and shortage of skilled manpower have made life difficult for us,” points out the district secretary of the Karur District Tailors’ Union A. Murugesan. Power crisis has come to top our woes and has only complicated the issue in this unorganized sector, he adds.

Load shedding troubles

“Every day power is shut down for five hours - four hours of scheduled load shedding and at least one hour of out-of-turn power cut in the town. That means at least 60 per cent of our daytime is taken away, pushing us to the brink. The worst thing is that we do not know when our power woes would end,” observes R. Kandan, a tailor glancing over his sewing machine at a stitching unit at Sengunthapuram.

His electric powered machine is lying idle and so are many of his colleagues in the unit.

Silent Suffering

There are a lot of tailoring, stitching and embroidery units in Vengamedu, Vadivel Nagar, Rayanur, Thanthonrimalai, Sengunthapuram, Kamarajapuram areas of Karur town employing a lot of skilled labourers who come to work in them from even rural places.

“Imagine how a person with just Rs. 500 could spend through a week, taking care of all needs of his family. We have been toiling in silence. Inflation, rise in price of essentials and the like have only added to our misery,” observes a Sri Lankan refugee who is an inmate of the camp at Rayanur who wished anonymity.

There are many Sri Lankan refugees working as tailors in the town. Many from even far off refugee camps have come to work in Karur, after getting to know the opportunity in the textile town.

Distant dream

The wages depend on the size and extent of work the particular piece requires, points out Mr. Kandan. Usually it varies from Rs. 5.50 to Rs. 12 a dozen for the hand towel and such other varieties that need only simple stitching.

While earning itself is a problem, many could only dream of getting a sewing machine on their own. “Ours is a small dream - owning a sewing machine and that too a used one. Setting up a stitching unit is a day dream or that is beyond the imagination especially when the prices are sky rocketing and making ends meet is an impossible proposition,” C. Selvasekaran of Rayanur says.

Rising prices have taken a toll of the tailors in Karur and their fortunes have taken a downswing. Power crisis and market trends have only added to their woes.

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