Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Sircilla: panel for emergency measures

HYDERABAD: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour will recommend to the Union government a slew of emergency measures, including setting up a special textile zone, to prevent suicides and starvation deaths of weavers in Siricilla of Karimnagar district.

Addressing a press conference here after concluding a two-day visit to Sircilla and a public hearing here on Monday, chairman of the committee Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy explained the measures.

They included enhancing insurance cover and extending coverage to all 15,000 weavers, sanctioning of ‘Indira Awas Yojana’ houses within a month, hike of health insurance cover to Rs. 1 lakh, extending the insurable age to 70, revision of minimum wages, enhancing quantity of PDS supplies, waiver of loans obtained by weavers from different sources and subsidising the upgradation of technology of powerlooms.

Mr. Reddy said that poverty, indebtedness and malnutrition were the causes of deaths, including suicides. Even the district administration admitted that 330 weavers committed suicides in the last 10 years.

In the last one month, 24 weavers died and 21 of them committed suicides.

Special budget for Sircilla, where there were a large number of obsolete powerlooms, and revising the regulations to encompass these weavers would also form part of the recommendations.

Weavers’ association leader Uppala Narasaiah, Chairman of APCO Mandala Sriramulu, and others sought suitable measures to address the problems of weavers.

C.S. Rangarajan, hereditary priest of Chilkur Balaji temple here, wanted creation of demand for handloom cloth.

Instead of gold-plating temples like Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, they should think of suffering weavers. If half the population bought one pair of clothes every year, the handloom cloth would have a business of Rs. 10,000 crore.

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