BENGALURU: Silk lovers in the city can walk into any of the nine silk testing centres opened in the main retail hubs of the city, to check the purity of their product. Last week, the Silk Mark Organisation of India established nine consumer testing centres to help customers conduct purity tests with the help of personnel trained by Central Silk Board.
“The staff will take a strand from the material without damaging it and put it through two checks – under the microscope and flame tests. Much like how customers are cheated when it comes to buying gold, we found during our national expos that several people were cheated with impure silk,” said T Sivakumar, assistant director of Central Silk Board. Within five to 10 minutes, the test which costs `20, will ascertain the product’s purity.
“Several retailers mix polyster, cotton, nylon, viscose with silk and sell it at a cheaper price. For example, a pure silk saree would cost `2,000 but retailers who mix it with other materials, sell it for anywhere between `500 and `1,000. When we conducted free testing at expos, customers were shocked to know they had been cheated. This will affect the overall business of silk itself,” Sivakumar said, adding that based on the response to these centres, they plan to set up 100 more across the country.
The centres were inaugurated on March 8 by K M Hanumantharayappa, Chairman of Central Silk Board and Silk Mark Organisation of India and other officers. The centres are in BTM layout, Chickpet, Cubbonpet, Tank road, Jayanagar, Gandhi Nagar, M G Road, Okalipuram and R V Road.