In a major thrust to the handloom sector in the State, Handloom and Textiles Minister K T Rama Rao on Monday announced a slew of measures including a Rs 10.5 crore loan waiver, setting up of Handloom and Powerloom Corporations, deadline of November first week for implementation of subsidy for yarn, chemicals and dyes and administrative sanction for Gadwal Handloom Park.
The Minister, who held a review meeting on various initiatives and schemes of the Handloom and Textiles Department here, instructed the department officials to take immediate steps to process the loan waiver for weavers in the State. The government will release Rs 10.5 crore for the proposed loan waiver, which would benefit about 2,500 handloom weavers. Each weaver would be eligible for loan waiver up to Rs One lakh as assured earlier. The Minister asked the department officials to expedite the process of finalizing the beneficiaries list which was underway.
This is the first time that a comprehensive loan waiver to benefit both handloom and powerloom workers was being implemented in Telangana State, Rama Rao said, who also reviewed the status of subsidy release towards purchasing yarn, chemicals and dyes. Officials informed him that the formalities had been completed, following which the Minister said the subsidy disbursal process should start by November first week.
The Minister also reminded the officials that the Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s objective was that the incentives being announced to textiles and handloom sector should ultimately benefit the workers. A subsidy of 40 percent was being extended to handloom sector and 10 percent the powerloom sector in the State.
Directing the officials to ramp up the Weavers’ Thrift Scheme (Nethannaku Cheyutha) launched recently, he said targets and milestones have to be set up and the department should conduct special drives to ensure that all weavers are enrolled in this scheme.
As per the instructions of the Chief Minister, a Handloom Corporation and a Powerloom Corporation would be set up in the State soon. The Minister asked Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan and Shailaja Ramaiyer, Director of Handlooms and Textiles, to complete the formalities for the creation of these two corporations so that the government could allocate necessary corpus fund for them. Both the corporations would play a pivotal role in the development of both handloom and textiles sectors in the State and would help in implementation of various government initiatives intended for this sector, he said.
The Minister, reviewing the status of the proposed Gadwal Handloom Park, said administrative sanction for the Park had been accorded and the works would begin within two weeks. It was also decided that a Mega “in situ” powerloom upgradation camp with modern loom manufacturers and powerloom weavers would be conducted at Sircilla on November 18. The “in situ loom upgradation” has to be completed by March 2018, the Minister said.
During the meeting, the officials brought to the notice of the Minister certain unresolved issues of bifurcation of various organizations between TS and AP, under the department. They informed the Minister about the monies that are pending from the Andhra Pradesh government.
The officials were asked to take up these issues with their AP counterparts immediately. If the issues still remain unresolved, the Minister said he would personally take up this issue with his AP counterpart.
Source: Telangana Today