Handlooms and Textiles Minister K.T. Rama Rao directed the officials of the concerned department to prepare a handloom directory with complete details on the condition of handloom weavers and the sector itself.
The Minister held a review meeting with the officials here on Wednesday and said the government made the highest ever budgetary allocation to the handloom sector for the first time in the State. But officials should ensure that all the benefits reached the handloom workers without any pilferages while subsidy should be extended to the weavers by linking it to their Aadhaar and biometric identity. Policies should be formulated to see that the subsidy benefits were directly credited to the accounts of the handloom weavers.
Elaborating on the handloom directory, Mr. Rama Rao said it was Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s idea to have a detailed document, including the number of handlooms, handloom weavers and workers, production capacity etc., with full capacity and estimates. Based on this, special policies would be formulated for handlooms, powerlooms and textile sectors, he said.
As per the available survey, there were 17,000 handlooms in the State and 14,300 were geo-tagged. The objective of the government’s handloom policy was to protect the existing handloom workers and if some workers wanted to shift to other sectors, the government would extend cooperation to them. The government was considering extending loan with special subsidy to those contemplating to shift to other remunerative sectors.
Mr. Rama Rao instructed the officials to gather data on how many weavers were weaving silk, cotton and grey cloth and explore the marketing facilities to purchase their products. Opportunities should also be provided to the handloom weavers to sell their products not only to the government, but the outside market.
The State government should play the role of a master weaver to benefit small handloom workers. At present, the government was extending 50% subsidy on yarn to the handloom weavers. The meeting also discussed setting up State’s own handloom depots in addition to the National Handloom Development Corporation yarn depots to provide more benefits to the weavers.
Industry Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan, Textiles Director Sailaja Ramaiyar and other officials attended the meeting.
