The Hindu : Primary society polls augur well for weavers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 16, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

Primary society polls augur well for weavers

By M. Malleswara Rao

Hyderabad Feb. 15. Two major benefits to the handloom sector. The Government on Saturday completed the process of elections to primary weavers' societies in the cooperative sector coming under the purview of the APCO, their State level apex body, while the APCO itself turned the corner and reported profit for the first time, a Rs 2 crores so far for 2002-2003.

The counting of the votes cast during the polling yesterday as part of the elections, came to an end today and the feedback received by the Government showed that the elections to as many as 527 primaries were unanimous implying that their presidents and members were unopposed.

There were about 850 primaries spread all over the State but with some of them becoming defunct, only 756 out of them went for the elections. With 527 societies coming under unanimous category and with no nominations being received for 120 others, the real elections covered only 109 primaries. For the second category, officials will continue indefinitely as persons-incharge. The term of the presidents and members who were chosen in yesterday's elections, has been fixed as five years. The elected bodies will elect vice-presidents and secretaries on February 17. The elections to primaries which were not held since 2000 when the term of the previous bodies lapsed, comes as a great relief, providing the much-needed leverage to these vital bodies to solve the grassroot level weavers' problems which have been multiplying these days. At present, a total of 97,122 weavers are covered by the primaries.

As per the second benefit, the APCO remains with a profit of Rs 2 crores even with one and a half months to go for the closure of the financial year. This, according to official sources, comes as a morale booster after a period of depression during which the undertaking incurred a loss of Rs 6 crores per year, totalling a whopping Rs 30 crores now.

The feat of the APCO coming out of the woods was possible, the sources said, due to restructuring under the World Bank-aided APERP project. Under this, 1,858-strong staff was pruned by 1,000 with the offer of VRS (costing Rs 20c rores), a cut in establishment costs, closure of about 30 unviable showrooms in different parts of the State and country, and rendering of the remaining 353 outlets viable through marketing and other techniques.

Till January-end for 2002-2003, the APCO procured cloth material worth Rs 41.31 crores from different sources, including primaries, while the sales touched the Rs 63.90-crore mark. The expenditure was cut down to Rs 7.38 crores. In 2000-2001, the procurement was worth Rs 6.6 crores and the sales Rs 20.54 crores while expenditure was on high side at Rs 15.72 crores. Improvement began to stare at APCO the next year when the restructuring was undertaken, with the expenditure coming down to Rs 9.31 crores while the procurement and sales went up to Rs 24.14 crores and Rs 52.40 crores respectively. The APCO wants to take the turnover to the Rs 100-crore mark shortly, an achievement made previously when income was assured out of Janata Sari-Dhoti scheme and other perks such as sales to Government staff.

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