As labour shortage in apparel manufacturing units of Delhi-NCR is at its peak, the industry is on its toes to attract workers.
In Noida, Noida Apparel Export Cluster (NAEC) is working in multi-directionsin this regard and expecting that reasonable number of workers shall be soon available to the industry. NAEC is a leading trade body of Noida-based leading apparel exporters.
“We have approached various departments of State Government like MSME, skill development, labour and told them that Noida’s apparel exporters require at least one lakh workers as there are a lot of orders but workers are very less. The officials of these departments have assured to support us on an immediate basis,” said Lalit Thukral, President, NAEC.
He further added that many factories are suffering due to labour scarcity and are forced to utilise 60 per cent capacity only.
The NAEC is increasing its efforts to start training centres in nearby villages of Noida and Greater Noida. As of now, around seven such centres are operational withseven more such centres in the offing.
Lalit said that few of three factories were able to get such centres, but certainly, much more and long-term training initiatives are required. “Keeping this in mind, we are also opening another centre of Apparel Training and Design Centre ATDC in Jewar,” added Lalit.
The factories are consistently calling the workers who have not come back from their villages. However, a large chunk of workers are not coming back as they have enough work in their villages or wish to return only after the marriage season gets over.
“We have also approached actor and social activist Sonu Sood to provide help in this regard as few months back he had assured to help us with regard to labour availability,” said Lalit.
Notably, Noida is one of the leading apparel manufacturing hubs with 3,000 apparel units. It has annual exports of Rs. 30,000 crore and around 9,00,000 workers are engaged in apparel factories.
