Stakeholders in textile sector urged to join hands

Different stakeholders should come together in the textile industry to make the industry sustainable in the future along with a sound compliance of all labour laws.

“We have formed a ‘Garment Support Group’ to actively liaison with all stakeholders of the industry like workers, mill owners, labour unions, government agencies and non-government organisations working in this sector,” Pramod John, executive director of a non-government organisation Prakruthi, said on the sidelines of the ‘Garment Support Group’ meeting here.

He also said the attrition rate should be reduced in all textile hubs to maintain the competitive advantage in the global market.

The textile industry occupies an important position in the industrial landscape of Karnataka through its contribution to industrial prod-uction, employment generation and export earnings. It is next only to the agriculture sector in terms of employment generation.

The textile sector contributes 0.50 per cent of the GDP of the state, which is around Rs 1,00,000 crore in value. The state accounts for 20 per cent of the national garment production, wor-th Rs 7,500 crore, which is 8 per cent of the national exports. “With rising opportunities in Bangalore, there is a high rate of attrition in garment factories. So, every stakeholder in the industry should come together to retain the talent for sustainability of the industry,” John said.

Referring to the matter of labour compliance, he said the group was in talks with all trade union leaders to solve all the labour issues in the textile industry.

“While there are a host of labour laws in the country to protect the rights of workers, they are not benefited by them due to their ignorance regarding such laws. So, we want to actively engage the textile workers with the help of trade unions for educating about labour laws,” he said. The textile industry in India is facing tough competition from countries like Bangladesh, China and other South East Asian nations in the recent time.

While the cost advant-age of Indian textile industry in terms of cheap labour is slowly fading, the country is also facing other issues like high raw material cost, labour unrest in some textile hubs among others.