Common Facility Centre, a boon for local goldsmiths

Nellore: The district is famous for ornament making and the Central government’s approval for setting up a Common Facility Centre (CFC) here would be a feather in the cap for enhancing quality and precision in design. Being funded by the Centre, the CFC would enhance livelihood options for local goldsmiths through quality control, acquaint with latest technologies in manufacturing, and market facilities.

The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) has accorded formal approval and sanctioned for Rs 8.5 crore in which beneficiary/state government share should be around Rs 1 crore.

The state government, as part of its support to the CFC, allocated 12 cents of land at Old Municipal Office area for constructing the state-of-the-art structure for accommodating all facilities. The MSME has adopted the cluster development approach for enhancing the productivity and competitiveness as well as capacity building of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) in the country and has been supporting the workmen clusters through sanctioning of the CFCs.

A cluster is a group of enterprises located within an identifiable and as far as practicable, contiguous area and producing similar products or services. Main objective of the programme is to support the sustainability and growth of MSEs by addressing common issues like improvement of technology, skills and quality, access to market and capital, etc besides building capacity for common supportive action through formation of self-help groups, consortia, up-gradation of associations, etc.

“A poor goldsmith, who cannot invest huge amount for constructing a work place, install costly machinery and has to maintain staff for improving the trade. So, this CFC would be a boon for them for hassle-free traditional livelihood activity with nominal charges fixed by the government from time to time,” said B Ramanaiah Achary, Managing Director of Vikrama Simhapuri Goldsmith Cluster Services Private Limited, a SPV formed for the sake of the CFC.

In fact, there are around 30,000 goldsmith workers across the district in which 50 per cent are Bengali population, who migrated from eastern parts of the country. But, with the influx of migrated population, local workmen are losing profitable livelihood activity and the new facility would enhance their opportunities where they only will be allowed.

Now, as part of efforts for unifying the professional workers for forming them as a cluster, SPV governing body is making arrangements for issuing Identification Cards (ID) to goldsmiths by the government. Office of the Assistant Director, Ministry of Textiles, located in Tirupati, is providing ID cards and 1,200 cards have already been provided to the local goldsmith workers.

The facilities available at the CFC are laser welding, laser marking, testing, melting, microwire drawing, coin stamping, electro plating and enamelling. Moulding centre, magnetic polishing unit, electrical polishing unit, automatic wax moulding and other important machinery are also coming up at the facility.

There are 9 development projects in the state currently and 2 are for CFCs and 7 are for infrastructure development projects. Kith and kin of local goldsmith families would get employment in the CFC and others would also be provided skill development training for running various machines in the CFC.

“We are requesting the state government to take up construction of the building which would be taken back in case if it was not used for intended purpose. This would lessen financial burden on the CFC where we can focus the funds for skill upgradation among goldsmiths by providing training and quality equipment for the benefit of people in the trade.

BIS Hallmarking Centre would also come up for certifying quality of jewels made by local goldsmiths where private centres are showing disparity,” added Ramanaiah Achary.