RAJANNA-SIRCILLA: With steep hike in yarn price, cotton powerloom industry has been in crisis for last three months in Sircilla, known as another Bhiwandi.
Out of 30,000 powerlooms in Sircilla, about 5,000 produce cotton cloth. Each cotton powerloom used to produce 60 metre of cloth per day and now the production has come down to 50 per cent. Instead of two shifts, only day shift is being continued. About 2,000 workers and owners depend on cotton cloth production and the present crisis is leading to unemployment as the owners of the powerlooms are sitting idle due to high yarn price.
According to sources, yarn price which used to be `500 per kg was increased by `200 suddenly and the powerlooms owners are unable to bear this additional burden.
To bear the new price, one metre cloth has to be priced at `4 more but buyers refuse to buy at that rate. They are willing to purchase at old rate. At the best they are ready to accept just `1 per metre hike. Some owners are taking risk and producing cloth by borrowing money from private money lenders but many units have closed down.
The situation is leading to extreme steps and within two days two cotton powerloom unit owners Chiluka Satyanarayana and Merugu Uma Maheshwar committed suicide by hanging at their own powerloom unit sheds.
Meanwhile, Handloom and Textile Department authorities appealed to powerloom workers and owners not to take extreme steps as the government is taking steps to ensure handful work. Additional director of Handloom and Textiles V Ashok Rao said already an order was placed from Rajiv Vidya Mission (RVM) for school uniforms and due to steep hike of yarn price there are problems. “We are diverting them to terrycotton cloth production, which is flexible and affordable to powerloom units,” he said.