Festive gift to make women corona warriors smile
BENGALURU: There’s a festive season gift being wrapped for the state’s women corona warriors. The Karnataka government, looking to reward frontline workers for their service in tackling the pandemic, has chanced upon the handloom sari as the perfect token of appreciation.
Saris will be gifted to doctors, nurses, pourakarmikas, anganwadi and ASHA workers, police and Home Guards. With this little project, the government hopes to help out the State’s weavers, who worked through the lockdown but have seen subdued demand for their products.
Karnataka has about 54,000 handloom weavers and 1.4 lakh powerloom weavers mostly concentrated in Belagavi, Bagalkot, Chitradurga, Vijayapura, Bengaluru Rural and Ramanagara districts.
Commissioner of the Department of Textiles Upendra Pratap Singh told TNIE that a proposal to purchase around six lakh saris at a cost of `35 crore has been sent to the government. “We won’t call for a tender for the purchase, but buy directly from weavers in small quantities so that we can purchase from as many weavers as possible,” he said. CM B S Yediyurappa has reportedly asked officials to fix the budget at `500 per sari. Textiles Minister Shrimant Patil is said to be keen on making this proposal a reality by Dasara or Diwali.