Labour shortage problems ease partially for Surat textile mills

Even as around 40-odd textile mills shut shops in Surat due to financial crisis, mills in the synthetic textile industry has found some respite. The textile mills in the region has seen a slight increase in labour supply.

According to Devkishan Manghani, general secretary, Federation of Surat Textile Traders Association (FOSTTA), a sudden additional supply of about 14,000-15,000 workers was witnessed among the textile mills in Surat. There were about 450 textile mills of which now the synthetic textile industry in Surat houses close to 410 units, employing over 160,000 workers.

Apparently, the union minister of state for textiles Panabaaka Lakshmi recently stated that as many as 555 cotton and man made textile mills operating in non-small scale industries were closed in Mumbai, Surat, Ujjain and Kanpur.

"Since about 14,000-15,000 workers lost job post shutdown of the mills, the same were immediately absorbed by the industry, thereby easing labour shortage partially. However, the industry is still facing some shortage due to the NREGA scheme and rise in wages," Manghani added.

Earlier, Lakshmi has stated that most the textile mills closed down due to financial crisis, wherein Tamil Nadu topped the list registering closure of 168 units, followed by Maharashtra 60, Uttar Pradesh 50, Haryana 46, and Gujarat 40. Closure of the overall 168 units had affected about 290,000 workers in these states.

Units in the Surat textile industry are troubled by rising wages and labour shortage. For instance, as against Rs 250 daily wages couple of months ago, the same have risen to about Rs 350-400 per day in the region. This, further, has impacted the production cost of the close to 410 textile mills which take up outsourced work of about 70,000-100,000 metres per day per mill. Meanwhile, in all 30 million metres per day of fabric is manufactured and processed by the Surat textile industry.