Struggling to survive and manage their business, SME apparel exporters of Delhi-NCR are in a Catch-22 situation. Few months ago, most of these factories‘ fired’ majority of their workers as the factories were not having enough orders, but now as they have finally received some orders from overseas or from the domestic market, they are facing a shortage of manpower for the shopfloor, which includes stitching operators, supervisors, and operators in quality, packaging, etc. Though earlier a good number of workers were available, now there is‘ shortage’ due to many reasons, the biggest being that a large number of migratory workers went to their villages and didn’ t come back as there was no work left for them. Some of the workers who were‘ fired’ have got jobs in other factories or even in other trades and they are not willing to come back to their previous factories. On the other hand, tough working condition in garment factories is also responsible for this dearth.
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“ Earlier our factory was giving advance to workers and full attendance bonus was also being given, but now there is no such scheme. Even amount from their salary is deducted if they come late … It is really‘ demotivating’ for workers and they don’ t want to work with us again,” admitted a Noida-based factory official on the request of anonymity.
According to sources, rather than keeping workers for longer term, many factories are rotating workers within 3 to 6 months. In Delhi-NCR, workers are used to working overtime( OT) to make more money, but now due to fewer orders, factories can’ t offer OT, and so many workers are not interested to work for regular hours. Further, there is an increasing trend of piece-rate employment by workers, while factories generally prefer to hire workers on salary basis.
These conditions are also pressurising labour suppliers, as garment factories are giving debit
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note against them for small issues. To overcome this problem, most of the labour contractors are no longer offering credit period, which was a common practice earlier, but instead asking for cash payments or immediate transfer of payment for security.
Commenting on the above situation, Ajay Mishra, GM-HR, CTA Apparels, Noida told Apparel Online,“ These months normally
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have shortage of workers due to Eid, agricultural reasons and marriage season, and so migratory workers go back to their states. We as a company are not facing such a shortage of workers as we are getting some workers who were‘ fired’ from SMEs or noncompliant factories. Such workers are happy to work with us or any other organised factory that despite having market pressures, offers more facilities than SME factories.” |
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The 6th edition of TANTU seminar will roll out in New Delhi on 15 September 2018. The theme of this year’ s seminar will be‘ Art of Shirt-Making’. Men’ s shirt is probably one of those few garment products which remained the least affected by the drastic change in fashion concepts in the last 5 decades. From board meetings to school uniforms, shirts have always remained the most standardised piece of garment.
Shirt market in India is estimated at US $ 5,754 million and men’ s shirt shares 94 per cent of the same. Further, manufacturing in India has come a long way in dressing
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up the Indian men with some of the finest high-end shirts. It’ s worth mentioning here that the global shirt market is estimated to be US $ 58.5 billion( in terms of value) and 2.83 billion pieces( in terms of volume) by 2020, according to a market research company STATISTA.
However, despite the lucrative opportunities in the shirt segment, export of men’ s shirt from India is not appreciable as most of the reputed shirt brands in the world do not source the garment from India. The upcoming seminar by TANTU will revolve around the same issue and figure out what is stopping Indian manufacturers
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from capitalising on this vibrant shirt market. The experts in panel discussion will focus on the technology and manufacturing processes, such as pattern making, fit and construction techniques.
Panel discussion will consist of the experts from leading manufacturing and sourcing organisations from south-east.“ This time experts will come from Bangladesh too,” informs Dr. Prabir Jana, Chairman and President of TANTU to Apparel Online. On the other hand, technology suppliers will also present their innovative and latest offerings to augment the value of shirt. It may be noted here
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that Freudenberg Performance Materials, a part of EURO 7 billion Group based in Germany has come forward to associate with TANTU as Gold partner. TANTU is the alumni association( North India chapter) of two textile colleges of West Bengal. As a group of core professionals serving textile and allied industries, TANTU brings together experts and working professionals on a common platform to discuss, debate and deliberate on issues related to the textile industry so that the industry accrues optimum benefit from the services of professionals and sustains in the competitive market. |