Textile traders oppose board for packers

MUMBAI, JAN 20: Textile traders8217; associations across the state have opposed the formation of a board for packing workers. It would force the traders cough up more money for a small work, not to speak of the immense paperwork involved, said Dhiraj Kothare, honorary secretary of the Mumbai Textile Merchants, Maharashtra, threatening they could go on a bandh in protest.

The state government in an amendment to the Khokha amp; Timber Unprotected Works Regulation of Employment and Welfare Amendment scheme, 1998, has introduced a scheme for workers involved in packing, baradana, patta and other preparatory works. The government has in a notification of January 7, 1999 constituted the scheme and the board decreeing that all persons carrying out the work of such packing will have to register themselves with the board. While there are around five lakh textile traders in the city, there are 500 to 700 such workers in the trade.

Textile traders are in regular need of these workers since textile orders forlong distance places have to be packed in cloth gunnies baradanas and stapled in either plastic or iron pattas8217;. According to Kothare, the workers who do these packing are paid a fixed amount for the pattas though fares vary for the baradanas. 8220;Since the workers get their own baradanas, we have to pay them at the charges they fix, like a certain amount for a metre,8221; he said.