National Handloom Day: Weavers in Anantapur district seek more sops under sectoral push

Anantapur: The handloom weavers in the district are suffering from a sense of discontentment as no government is addressing their basic problems like supply of raw materials at cost effective prices, protection of average weaver from exploitation by market forces and creation of a brand name for Dharmavaram sarees.

While 20,000 of the 40,000 strong weavers community in Dharmavaram had quit their profession and has turned into a labour force in the construction sector, some have remained in the profession for name's sake just to enjoy the government freebies like the Rs 24,000 subsidy amount being credited into the weavers accounts once every year.

Puttaparthi, Dharmavaram, Hindupur and Uravakonda are the handloom pockets in the district. The common complaint is that master weavers supply raw material to common weavers and pay a pittance to sarees made by hand-loom weavers. The master weavers pay a pittance to common weavers for their labour.

The labour cost is a minimum of Rs 200 to Rs 4,000 per saree. The high cost of raw materials and less labour payment is the dissuading factor for the common weavers to make an exit from their profession.

On an average, a handloom weaver weaves one saree a week and at the most five sarees a month. Ramana, a weaver from Dharmavaram, says that while the minimum cost of a handloom saree is Rs 5,000. There are saree designs that cost even Rs 1 lakh or so while a power loom saree is sold at just Rs 1,200.

He said the weavers were only asking the government to extend small incentives for the community. So far, about 25,000 weavers had migrated to other professions. The government must do something before our weavers' colonies are reduced to ghost colonies, he added.

He said the weavers were urging the chief minister to supply 100 units of power free of cost to weavers, creation of a revolving fund and provision of government guarantees to weavers' bank loans. Among other demands include setting up of a weavers' enforcement office in Dharmavaram, payment of Rs 2,000 maternity allowance to every pregnant women of weaver for 6 months and compensation to families of weavers, who committed suicides and 13 members, who died of heart ailments. The families of deceased facing a bleak future as the bread winners are no more to support them.

There are 1.40 lakh hand looms in the district and 2 lakh weavers are engaged in the work. There are 254 weavers' cooperative societies with 26,725 members and of them, 170 societies are functioning well.