FICCI New Delhi: Industry body FICCI, on Friday, said it has proposed to the textiles ministry coming up with a housing scheme in cities for workers, especially women, in garment industry. The growing difficulties faced by women garment workers arise the need for such a scheme. They suffer due to lack of safe and conveniently located accomodation in cities.
A major issue in the cities is the availability of land. In case there is an availablity of a suitable land, it could be offered by government by giving higher Floor Area Ratio (FAR) for worker housing/hostel purposes, FICCI suggested. Suitable land or Gram Panchayat land of the metro periphery within the vicinity of 10 km, may be requested to be offered by the local administration and it could be involved in the project if the industry does not have suitable land.
For the industry, such land may be free of cost. With the help of the PWD Department, suitable hostel with 500 to 1,000 beds may be constructed, for running it on a no-profit basis it could be handed over to Industry body/NGO. In India, number of female employees is the highest in the garment industry as compared to the other sectors and total workforce stands at 70 percent of the total workers. Lack of safe and conveniently located accommodation is one of the main problems faced by such women.
A decade ago, India's female participation in the workforce was 37 per cent, according to the FICCI. After giving training for two months, the textile and apparel industry is the only sector which can give formal employment. For getting enrolled for training it does not need higher qualification. After short training, even illiterate and semi-literate can also be absorbed.
It was observed that certain issues posed by the garment sector, need to be addressed if rate in workforce declines in the participation of women. Migration and attrition are the two factors where issues are centred around. In search of employment, most workers migrate from one state to another and particularly where there is concentration of textile and apparel units.
In NCR, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, such centres are visible in and around metros. Making of such facilities in and around these centres will go a long way in building and sustaining confidence of workforce to those who are unwilling to migrate distant places, especially migrant female workers.
By offering good incentive scheme due to its higher employment potential with low investment, many states are trying to attract Textile and Apparel units. Seperation of family, new surrounding, new culture and food habits, safety and security arising out of lack of proper accommodation leads to the migration problem.
Although many workers have the desire to continue their work in metros but soon they give up and move back to their roots. This results in heavy attrition of 8-10 percent per month and industry and country has to bear heavy costs by losing skilled workforce.
By devising suitable schemes, this can be arrested for providing safe and suitable hostel accommodation to such migrant workers, it is imperative to look into the housing/hostel issues.