Link textiles sector with employment scheme: Ministry to PM

The Textiles Ministry has written to the Prime Minister seeking the sector's linkage to the employment guarantee scheme, saying that it will help attract workers to the industry that is facing shortage of skilled manpower.

Linking the programme under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) with the sector will help train about 15 lakh workers in the next three years, it has said.

MNREGA, which was launched in 2006, guarantees 100-day employment to the poor in rural areas every year.

"Recently, I wrote to the Prime Minister proposing to link MNREGA employment to the textiles sector to minimise the problems of skilled labourers. We have to wait for his response," Textiles Minister Kavuru Sambasiva Rao told PTI.

The principle aim of MNERGA, he said, is to provide employment to people who do not get jobs during the off-season periods and by linking the scheme to textiles sector these people will also be trained.

"We want to train 15 lakh people in the textiles sector in the next three years which will help in making textiles exports globally competitive," he said.

The government has already allocated Rs 1,900 crore for skills development in the sector and some funds from the MNREGA scheme will help to provide training to people, along with paying them wages, he added.

Rao said he had also written to Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, suggesting to him the merging of the MNREGA scheme with skill development.

"I wrote to Jairam Ramesh," he said, adding that he did not agree to it.

At present, about 45 million workers are employed in the textiles sector.

During 2012-13, the country's textiles exports stood at $34 billion. For the current fiscal, the government has set an export target of about $43 billion.

The US and Europe together account for almost 65% of India's textiles exports.