Garment manufacturers in Tiruppur have sought supportive measures from the State government to increase their competitiveness.
Minister for Handlooms and Textiles R. Gandhi and Textile Secretary Dharmendra Pratap Yadav chaired a meeting of the Technical Advisory Committee here recently.
President of Tiruppur Exporters’ Association K.M. Subramanian said at the meeting that the units should be permitted to implement overtime for 145 hours a quarter instead of 75 hours permitted now. “This is already in force in Maharashtra since 2018 and recently implemented in Karnataka,” he said. Since overseas buyers were making environment and sustainability norms mandatory to source from India, the State government should allocate funds and declare Tiruppur as a sustainable sourcing cluster.
It should also allocate land in Tiruppur district to build houses for workers under the affordable housing scheme. Further, in States such as Karnataka and Telangana, the State government supplemented subsidies extended by the Central government with additional State-level schemes. But, in Tamil Nadu, if a unit had availed of central subsidy, the State government did not give additional subsidy. This should be modified, he said.
A.C. Eswaran, president of the South India Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association, said the garment manufacturers were hit badly by fluctuating yarn prices. If the yarn prices should stabilise, the State government should withdraw the hike introduced last year in fixed charges for electricity and should not collect peak hour charges. The Central government should take steps to control import of fabric and garments from Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, pollution control norms are not stringent and the government offered several subsidies. This made knitted fabric ₹50 a kg cheaper than Indian fabric and knitted apparel ₹10 to ₹15 a kg less than Indian products, he said.
