Parliament's standing committee on labour in its latest report stated that though 11 development and welfare schemes were being implemented for the handloom sector by the textiles ministry, 'there is no perceptible improvement in the sector as a whole or in the conditions of workers engaged in it'.
Despite 11 development and welfare committees being set for it, the handloom sector is still languishing.
In view of the problems plaguing the sector, the report, tabled in the just-concluded winter session, underlined the need for 'total recast and a new fillip' to perk up it and make it viable, competitive and self-sufficient.
Instead of loading it with the multiplicity of schemes and programmes and looking for ad hoc solutions to problems, the committee headed by S Sudhakar Reddy recommended that solutions be found with regard to the streamlining of the production in the handloom sector with high productivity and latest technologies, ensuring availability of working capital, widening of the product range and strengthening market links.
Noting that the handloom sector was highly decentralised and dispersed, the committee said efforts have been made to organise handloom weavers into co-operatives during the past 50 years.
“However, these efforts proved dismal failures as only 17 percent of the handloom weavers could be brought under the co-operative fold so far,” it said, adding that many of the co-operatives were defunct due to inaction on the part of the central and state governments.
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