The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Floor price for coir demanded

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Tuesday, Aug 05, 2008
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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Floor price for coir demanded

Special Correspondent

Thiruvananthapuram:

With the traditional coir industry heading for a crisis, several organisations have demanded a floor price and procurement by the Coirfed to bail out small producers.

According to sources, the coir industry is going through a major crisis and hundreds of coir producers are quitting the scene, pushing coir workers, reckoned to be among the poorest of the poor, into unemployment. The difficulty in finding market and the steep fall in prices have virtually put the entire sector on a needle point.

The sources said the State government was not successful in implementing the wage hike announced last year. It had failed to implement its promise to procure coir at fair prices.

The government should make additional budgetary allocation for procurement operations, besides permitting Coirfed to open new depots for procurement from producers, including those in the cooperative sectors, according to G. Sugunan, president of the Kerala Coir Workers Union. He said that coir procurement should not be confined to the cooperative sector, but other small producers should also be brought within the purview of the programme. The entire funds for the coir sector had been utilised through the coir cooperatives, a majority of which were controlled by the CPI(M).

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