ot all labourers working in the textile processing units here are as fortunate as 40-year-old Laxminarayana. He is able to take care of his family with regular work on his hand as the borewell in his employer’s unit is still pumping sufficient water.
Workers in several other units either get limited work or pray for new work orders so that they can purchase water tankers. The water shortage in this town has only compounded the woes of the textile processing units already in crisis due to multifaceted problems. This has directly affected the workers whose chances of getting regular work has already shrunk.
Drought conditions caused by monsoon failure have depleted groundwater table and dried-up most of the borewells in Sircilla and its surroundings along with the rivulet Manair that has its course abutting the once-textile-rich town. The water woes, in turn, have become a bane for many of Laxminarayana’s friends as getting regular work has become a luxury for them since the units they are employed with have no dependable water source now. Workers such as Alle Balraj and Dubai Ramesh, engaged in units with dried-up water source, count on their luck to get work as the owners have reduced production considerably due to water scarcity and other market-linked problems.
“We get work only when the unit owners order for water tankers to run different sections of textile processing from fabric dying to starching, stentering (stretching), sizing, drying and others. It also depends on orders the units get. Or else, we have to bide time at home as we don’t know other work,” said Srinivas, who works for a unit that was shut down on the day of this correspondent’s visit due to lack of water.
Sircilla was the richest town in Karimnagar district once with handlooms, power looms and textile processing units whirring round-the-clock. “There were over 100 units a decade ago, but hardly 70 are surviving now with only 25 to 30 functioning with business hardly meeting sustenance”, T. Damodar, a processing unit owner, explained.
“The crisis in textile units coupled with water woes is affecting our lives from children’s education to family’s health needs,” Mr. Laxminarayana observed, wistfully.
There were over 100 units a decade ago, but hardly 70 are surviving now with only 25 to 30 functioning with business hardly meeting sustenance
T. Damodar,
Processing unit owner.
‘There were over 100 units a decade ago, but hardly 70 are surviving now with only 25 to 30 functioning with business hardly meeting sustenance’
