IMPRESSIONS from a Cross-section

Topic

The textile industry is highly dependent on manpower. Please throw some light on availability of labour and training facilities. Also, what role do you see for textile/fashion institutes?

Textile institutes need to change their curriculum

The question of staff shortage as well as skilled resources keeps cropping up in the Indian textiles industry. Fibre2Fashion spoke to representatives of few textile bodies from South India on the issue.

SK Rangarajan
President, South India Spinners Association (SISPA)

The industry as a whole is suffering badly because of severe shortage of skilled manpower. Though the Central and state governments have come out with schemes to encourage skill development, the small units are not able to train their workforce under the scheme due to certain practical difficulties.

The textile institutes have to change their curriculum in such a way that the students passing out of these institutes should be employable with minimum training.

N Viveknanthan
President, South India Imported Machine Knitters Association (SIIMKA)

Tiruppur cluster that has an annual business of ₹40,000 crore directly employs over 5 lakh people. There is a constant demand for workers here. The demand for migrant labourers has risen nationwide, resulting in high attrition in local factories. Consequently, the knitters are finding it hard to source, mobilise, recruit and retain the migrant workforce. So SIIMKA initiated direct recruitment on its official placement cell for the members by conducting job fairs in various districts of Tamil Nadu. Moreover, the association had also contacted the Labour and Employment Departments of several other states to source human resources from there. We have already signed an MoU with NIFT-TEA and for training for fresh labourers and migrant labourers.

Prabhu Dhamodharan
Secretary, Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF)

We are facing two challenges as an industry—workers shortage and training. We have to connect the demand and supply to overcome the crisis. Parallelly, we have to improve the efficiency of our workforce and also invest in automation in all possible areas.

We have lot of manpower in many parts of India and they are looking for job. But in Tamil Nadu, we have a regular shortage. We are planning for mobilisation centres in few regions to connect this gap.

On the training front, we are implementing PMKVY scheme in 100 of our member mills and planning to extend its another 50 units.

A Prakash
President, Telangana State Federation of Textile Associations (TSFTA)

In the manufacturing sector, every industry is facing human resources crunch. This problem is mainly because of the attitude of the young generation of today who are mostly attracted to services sector like IT & ITES and/or hospitality sectors.

The education system in the country plays a major role in changing this attitude and the curriculum should be changed in such a way that children are taught self-sustaining and other job skills from high school.

S Nagarajan
President, Dyers Association of Tirupur (DAT)

There is shortage of workers, and we need training institute to train new workers. Textiles/fashion institutes are able to deliver human resources required for junior/senior level production executives only. So, shortage of lower level workers is always there.

Published on: 26/10/2018

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.

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