Expressing anguish over the functioning of Apparel Export Promotion Council, the apparel exporters from Tirupur and few other clusters met Union Ministers and officials to get necessary policy changes implemented for making the Council more effective and industry friendly.
The exporters who voice for the changes in the Council’s administration, are citing the Comptroller and Auditor General’s audit report and few other documents also to vindicate their demand for making the functioning transparent to all exporters.
“C & AG report has indicated certain frauds so too a communication of Puneet Kumar, an IAS officer and secretary general of the Council itself made on August 19 last year that highlighted mismanagement of funds. Both the documents are now in public domain”, pointed out T. R. Vijayakumar, secretary-elect of Tirupur Exporters Association.
One of the main demands put forward by the apparel exporters is to compulsorily restrict the tenure of office bearers to two terms in the ‘same post’ without having provision for re-election even after a certain period.
“This is an absolute necessity as presently just a very few people have been clinging on to the post of chairman by rotation among themselves for the past 30 years. They looked to be more interested in remaining in office and hence, the business growth interests of small and medium scale exporters across the country were ignored”, said Raja M. Shanmugam, president-elect of Tirupur Exporters Association. However, the exporters are satisfied that one of their earlier demands made last year to introduce e-voting for election to select executive committee members in AEPC was fulfilled by the Union Government.
“They changed the Foreign Trade Policy to introduce e-voting. This will prevent the proxy voting, a technique practiced by people who try to get re-elected endlessly”, said Mr. Vijayakumar.
