The CMD, National Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation (NSFDC) under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and Development Commissioner (Handlooms) under Ministry of Textiles signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the presence of Shri Thaawarchand Gehlot, Union Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment and Smt. Smriti Irani, Union Minister of Textiles here. Senior Officers of both the Ministries, DC (Handlooms) and NSFDC were also present on the occasion. The objective of signing this MoU is to help Scheduled Caste weavers and their families by promoting production and marketing of high-value quality Handlooms products at Block level Cluster in various States like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Odisha etc.
Handlooms Sector is a part of Textile Industry, the second largest economic activity after agriculture. There are around 44 lakh Handloom weavers in the country out of which 3.90 lakh are Scheduled Caste Weavers. Under the cluster approach, new strategy for promoting production and marketing of high-value quality handloom products shall be adopted to ensure more earnings of the Scheduled Caste Handloom Weavers.
In this endeavor, both the MoU signing parties shall popularize the schemes of DC (Handlooms) amongst the SC weavers through Awareness Programmes and advertisements in electronic/print media in SC weavers concentrated areas and collaborate for capacity building including skill up gradation and economic development of SC weavers and their families for achieving the desired outcome. Exhibitions/Fairs shall be organized by both the parties for providing marketing assistance to SC weavers for enhancing their earnings.
Both the parties shall also organize relevant skill development programmes for up-gradation of skills of the scheduled caste weavers in clusters and also for sharing knowledge and experience. This endeavour shall enable scheduled caste weavers to sharpen their skills for production and marketing of high-value quality handloom products and better marketing linkages and therefore to have more income.