Closed textile mills in TN to get new life as training centres

With the textile sector in the region looking for ways to grapple with skilled manpower crunch, the industry stakeholders are now considering to convert sick and closed textile mills into training institutes.

The apex textile bodies and organisations such as the Southern India Mills' Association (SIMA) are considering the possibilities of converting the sick and closed co"�operative textile mills into training places to provide skilled hands to the industry.

In order to overcome the shortage of skilled manpower that had been crippling the industry in the region, the Tirupur Exporters' Association (TEA) has been holding talks with five of the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) across the State - in Trichy, Madurai, Dharmapuri, Tirunelveli and Krishnagiri, to offer short-term courses, on tailoring or garmenting, to the interested candidates.

Under the initiative, TEA would provide the machinery and expertise and the ITIs are expected to provide the infrastructural support. This is likely to materialise in the next academic year.

Similarly, the South India Small Spinners' Association (Sisspa) also has been pitching in for such tie ups. A few weeks ago, the Coimbatore district administration conducted talks with the members of the association to offer a 15-acre land on the Mettupalayam Road on the outskirts of the city, to set up an industrial training institute.

Sources in the SIMA told Business Standard that they were in talks with some of the stakeholders of the industry to provide machinery and other infrastructure to the interested labourers to overcome the skilled labour shortage.

Going by the current level of capacity expansion happening in the textile industry, the annual demand for skilled workers is estimated to be between 25,000 and 30,000.

But given the low productivity of the existing labour and the high rate of attrition among the skilled workers, the units that are on expansion mode, are compelled to take the training of workers rather seriously.

SIMA has submitted a plea to the State government for converting sick mills into training centres and is planning to convene a meeting in the first week of November.