Tirupur garment exporters have been promoting the NIFT-TEA Knitwear Institute situated in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu to open two outreach centres outside the state. The present plans are to set up one NIFT-TEA Skill Development Centre in Telangana and another one in Odisha, both on the invitation by the government authorities in the two respective states.

Mr. Shanmugam, who is also the chief mentor of NIFT-TEA Knitwear Institute, and his team from Tirupur had completed discussions on the planned skill development centre with K. T. Ramarao, Minister for Industry and Information Technology in the Telangana Government.

According to Tirupur Exporters Association president Raja Shanmugam, the centres will impart skill training to industrial workers on apparel manufacturing,

Mr. Shanmugam said that the training would be in the areas of tailoring, pattern making, designing and quality checking, and thereby, make the people ‘employable’ for the textile sector.

Mr. Shanmugam also hinted that plans were afoot to organise a Textile Research Conclave in Tirupur shortly. He further added that different stakeholders in the textile industry will be involved in the event which was aimed at dissemination of new technologies that came out of research.

A latest invitation has also come from Telangana for imparting skill enhancement training is in view of the textile park coming up at Warangal. On the invitation of the government officials in Odisha, training methodologies similar to Tamil Nadu would be adopted in there too.