Telangana govt to come out with a separate policy to help handloom weavers overcome hardship

Telangana has some of the famous handloom centres in the country, but the weavers there are facing hardship. Keeping this in mind the Telangana Government will soon coming out with a separate policy for handloom weavers in centres like Gadwal and Pochampalli and other areas of the State.

Minister for IT and Panchayat Raj K Taraka Rama Rao after inaugurating a handloom products exhibition, ‘Colours of Rajasthan’, said that workers who are dependent on Powerlooms for their livelihood are facing hardships although they have received some succour in form of recently announced loan waiver. The Cabinet has taken a decision in this regard and they will elaborate on it in the forthcoming Budget session.

The loan waiver is likely to help about 2,000 plus weaver families, the Minister added.

Rao represents Sircilla Assembly constituency in Karimnagar district, which once competed with top textile centres in the country such as Solapur and Surat.

In Sircilla there are 36,000 powerlooms and over 50,000 weavers. Powerloom weavers in Sircilla are a distressed lot. It is for their protection that they thought of writing off their loans.

Rao also said that he recently met Union Minister of State for Textiles Santosh Kumar Gangwar in Delhi and requested that Sircilla be given a status of mega powerloom cluster. The status will enable the looms to get subsidy on electricity and also benefit the workers.