The knitwear industry in Tirupur, which is facing acute shortage of skilled workers, will benefit from the recent Central Government decision to implement a new skill development scheme covering the entire value chain of the textile sector, excluding spinning and weaving in organized sector.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, gave its approval this week for a new skill development scheme, ‘Scheme for Capacity Building in Textile Sector (SCBTS)’ from 2017-18 to 2019-20 with an outlay of Rs. 1300 crore. The scheme will have National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) compliant training courses.
Raja M Shanmugham, President of Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) said the Tirupur knitwear cluster employs six lakh workers directly and by enhancing the productivity, competitiveness can be attained and sustain in the global markets. It has been a long pending demand of the knitwear industry of Tirupur for allocation of funds to impart skilling to new workers and upskilling of existing workers.
The small and medium scale knitwear industry in Tirupur generates about Rs. 30,000 crore revenue a year. Most of the labourers in Tirupur cluster are self-groomed without any proper technical skill orientation or training and this creates an inconsistency in the production and quality parameters resulting in reputation and business loss.
Even a 10 percent saving would yield a saving of Rs 3,000 crore for the industry. The industry estimates even 25 percent improvement can be done to produce ‘zero defect’ knitwear, said Raja Shanmugham.
At present the NIFT TEA College for Knitwear Fashion’s skill division has already trained 15,000 workers and have placed the trained candidates among TEA member units.

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