ALAPPUZHA: The sun is blazing down on the asbestos-roofed Chenganda Coir Vyavasaya Cooperative Society factory near Cherthala in Alappuzha. The air is sweltry, and filled with coconut husk dust.
Unmindful of the harsh conditions, about 30 women are busy making coir. Like robots.
They have been working at this factory for 10 years. They have no complaints about the working conditions; the job is too precious for them.
What, however, bothers them are issues plaguing the industry – lack of raw materials, declining demand for coir and value-added products such as mats, low wages, and inadequate government backing.
Alappuzha is one of India’s foremost coir production hubs. The constituency is keenly watched as Congress national general secretary K C Venugopal takes on incumbent MP A M Ariff of the CPM, and the NDA’s Sobha Surendran.
However, workers in the coir sector here have little hope that the upcoming general elections will improve their livelihoods. The popular sentiment is that politicians have been – and will continue to be – indifferent.
“Despite raising the issues with MPs, MLAs and ministers several times, there has not been any effective intervention to resolve the crisis,” said Kavitha, who has been in this industry for over a decade.
“Workers have been demanding a wage hike for long, but the state government has been apathetic. There has been no wage hike for the past eight years.”
Coir factory employees, who from dawn to dusk, earn Rs 300-450 a day. “Many workers now go for MNREGA work as the wages are similar, but the workload is lower,” noted Kavitha, whose mother was also an employee at the same factory.
About 86 per cent of coir workers in Alappuzha are women, and 44 per cent of them belong to the 50–60 age group.
Most workers were reluctant to speak about the polls and their expectations. They appeared frustrated. “Political leaders glorify the coir sector in their speeches. But the truth is that none of them has tried to understand our problem at the ground level,” said Usha Thangachan, who has been a coir worker for over 30 years.
Appukuttan Madhavapalli, who has been a coir worker for as many years, expressed similar lament. “If the government continues to neglect the coir industry, we will probably be the last generation to work in this sector,” he said.
Babu K, owner of the Marottikkal Coir Works near Arookutty, also slammed the government for neglecting the coir industry. “Despite multiple applications, we haven’t received any subsidy for the last five years,” he said.
“The state and Union government should take equal responsibility for reviving the coir sector.”
Radhakrishnan, an employee at Marottikkal Coir Works, said the government should appoint a “commission with extensive industry knowledge to investigate the industry’s downfall”. According to the Coir Board of India, Kerala has about 700 registered coir units. Back in the 1980s and ’90s, there was a huge demand for coir products from Alappuzha. But now, stakeholders say the “focus has shifted to Tamil Nadu”.
“I started the factory after my graduation. We had about 100 employees,” he recalled.
“However, the unit went into loss, forcing us to scale down operations. Now there are just 20 workers. Many of our employees shifted to MNREGA work.”
Babu highlighted the Tamil Nadu government’s intervention to boost the coir industry there. “We need similar efforts here, too, to reclaim lost glory,” he said.