Raja M Shanmugam, president, Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) has appealed Rajiv Pratap Rudy, minister of state (IC) of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship in Coimbatore, to support for upskilling of workers in Tirupur knitwear sector.

He requested that a one-time long term initiative should be undertaken to uplift the skill proficiency of existing labourers in textile clusters in order to increase the productivity at par with competing countries and at the same time reduce the wastage. The initiative to upskill the skill inventories of Tirupur cluster is pegged at Rs.150 crore.

Skill upgradation initiative will help to achieve certain benefits like increase in productivity; mistakes and defects will be substantially reduced to achieve zero defect target; quality consistency would create a brand value for Indian products in the global markets; any profit-making unit would plan for the expansion thereby creating an accommodating space for the fresher’s to gain entry into the industry.

It may be mentioned that the knitwear exports from Tirupur sustained and recorded Rs.23,000 crore in the year 2015-16 against Rs.21,000 crore achieved in previous year, with a growth rate of 12 per cent. The share of Tirupur knitwear exports in all India total garment exports is 20 per cent.

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