Narsingdi district which was once famous as the Manchester of Bangladesh for its handloom textiles , is now but a shadow of its once golden past
Handloom sector cries out for attention
Nasreen Khandaker
Over 0.1 million looms have closed down in this district over the last thirty-five years throwing over 80,000 weavers into unemployment. This picture of the handloom factories there is also a representative one of handloom factories in varying degrees in other parts of the country.
The handloom industry has the capacity to create a lot more jobs, directly and indirectly at a very low cost compared to the mechanized sector. But the mechanization of the textile industry, has led to handloom cloth being woven on these mechanized power looms, leading to mass unemployment in the handloom industry.
In Bangladesh, over 10 million people are still connected with the handloom industry and the sector manufacturers nearly 50 percent of the countrys fabric requirement. The handloom sector provides more than Taka 10 billion value addition for the national economy. It plays an important role in the national economy, as it meets 40 per cent of domestic textile demand and 63 per cent of textile production. The fabrics produced by the handlooms are more so meant for the common people like saris, lungis bed sheets, etc.
This sector can be quickly uplifted in every sense to create jobs at the grassroots level where the same are badly needed. Besides, the handloom products can be a source of substantial foreign currency earnings. Skull caps, lungis, gamchas, bedsheets, bedcovers, etc., produced by the handloom sector are being exported to some Middle Eastern and South East Asian countries. Clothes from handlooms such as grammen check are being used increasingly to make apparels in the countrys export oriented readymade garments (RMG) industries. Such local handloom spun fabric have substituted to an extent the previously imported fabric for RMG industries. The handloom sector has a great deal of potential for further value addition in the RMG sector, for further meeting local needs of fabrics and expanding sales of its products directly in foreign countries. But at the moment, this is a neglected sector and reports appeared sometime ago that 37.6 per cent of the handlooms all over the country are not operational
The sector is looking towards the government to help it come out of the decay that has set in to the industry in recent years. Since the sector has the capability to generate a very high level of employment for men and women alike, the government should step in with measures to uplift the industry.
Among the measures suggested by experts is providing loans at concessional rates and also ensuring that the weavers are able to source their raw material requirements.
The last but not the least is a very good marketing strategy for the industry as a whole so that the weavers are able to get remunerative rates for their products.
The main problem of the handloom sector is one of credit. Handloom factories must be in a position to access institutional credit at reasonable rates of interest along with flexible mode of payment of the principal amounts and interests. The authorities should smash the syndicates which arm twist the handloom operators to buy yarn, dyes and chemicals at soaring prices. The illegal marketing of imported fabrics of the RMG sector in the local market and the smuggling in of Indian textiles products must also be stopped.
The writer is programmer in a local NGO
