A shortage of daily-wage labour after the Deepavali festival season at textile units in the Tirupur belt, a hub of knitwear products, has caused a delay in executing export orders worth Rs 500-crore in the last 10 days, trade sources said. In Tirupur alone, more than three lakh labourers work at 3,600 knitwear units and other ancillary units like screen printing, embroidering, dyeing, bleaching, printing, checking, sueding and peach finishing.
Generally, daily-wage and construction workers, go on leave for more than a week during the Deepavali festival. This season, most of the workers have not returned to work even after the festival season as they stayed back to attend to their crops which have shown good prospects following the good rain at the onset of Northeast monsoon, trade sources added. From the normally 10%-15% of daily-wage workers who do not return after every season, around 25-30% have not yet reported back to work even after a week of the festival.
However the knitwear manufacturers, export-oriented units in particular, are gearing up to cut production following declining demand for their products at international markets due to global economic recession. But the sudden decline in the workforce would put the exporters in trouble as they would not be able to execute the existing export orders as per schedule, a member of the Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) said.