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Sitting on the staircase outside
the powerloom unit, a labourer and his son wait for the supply
to resume.
(Photo: ummid.com) |
Malegaon:
A Friday is normally a very busy day for most of the
industrialists and powerloom mill owners in Malegaon. Yet they
have earmarked the afternoon for the seminar the Regional Textile
Commissioner Office, New Mumbai is organising in the town. They
are expected to be there in a large number - though not for the
talk on the pre-decided topic but with a set of their own agenda.
“We have seen such seminars and high level visits innumerable
times in the past sixty years. I would be in the seminar not to
listen to the hollow and empty promises these officials would make
but to present the long list of issues which is pushing the
textile industry in Malegaon to a virtual collapse and with a list
of demands pending with the government since more than five
decades”, President of Malegaon Industries & Manufacturers’
Association (MIMA) Khursheed Ansari said while talking to
ummid.com.
The Seminar will be addressed by the Textile Secretary, Ministry
of Textiles, New Delhi, Ms Rita Menon (IAS), who is in Malegaon
with her high profile entourage to address the local entrepreneurs
about the re-structured Textile Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS).
“The government’s textile schemes are normally meant for big
industrialists and hence they fail in Malegaon. For, Malegaon has
a typical chemistry and business style. It neither has advanced
powerlooms like other textile centres nor has industrialists who
can afford them. Hence hardly anyone in Malegaon could have taken
the benefit of the earlier TUF scheme”, Salim Qayyum, a local
weaver, said.
“The government should realise that we need a personalised and
specially designed scheme, the draft of which has been sent to the
concerned department many times. Otherwise, more than 100-year old
textile industry here would not survive”, he added.
The Textile industry in Malegaon with 1, 50,000+ powerlooms is
facing worst kind of recession since last few months. About 30% of
the powerloom units are closed and the number increasing with
every passing day. Local insiders claim that many mill owners have
become bankrupt due to the heavy loss they incurred in the past
few months.
“Visits are welcome but unless backed by concrete results they are
meaningless. The present situation in Malegaon demands urgent
relief for the local weavers from the government”, Pankaj Tibrewal,
a local trader said.
About their demands they said that octroi abolition, de-linking of
subsidies from bank loan, establishment of yarn and cloth godwons,
mechanism to control their prices, regularization of power tariffs
and supply and an increase in central government subsidies to
compensate the state government’s revised industry policy were
some of them for which they were fighting without any getting
result.
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