An increase happening in the proportion of other state labourers to the total workforce employed in Tirupur knitwear cluster during the recent years is looking to come as a blessing in disguise for the garment exporters during festivities like Deepavali.
Traditionally over the years, it has been an ordeal for the exporters to wait for many days after Deepavali to restart the production even though the third quarter of the financial year usually would be stuffed with huge volume of orders.
This is because that the predominant migrant labourers from within Tamil Nadu go for long Deepavali holidays with most of them return after a week or 10 days later. But things are now changing with the other state workers at present constituting almost 40 % of the total workforce in the cluster.
Agrees Raja Shanmugam, the president of Tirupur Exporters Association. “Due to this large presence of other state labourers, especially from North and North- Eastern states, production in many units have commenced again with a break of a day or two for Deepavali since those workers take a break only once in a year which too only by turn in batches”, he pointed out.
Industry estimates indicated that the inflow of other state labourers into Tirupur cluster had shown a sudden increase in the last five years. “The other state labourers were hardly five % of the total workforce a decade back and nearly 10 % five years back. After that, there has been sudden spurt in the proportion of other state labourers”, said Mr. Shanmugam.
With the job opportunities less back in their native States, the other state labourers here are willing to work for as many days as possible since their earnings were mostly on piece-rate or weekly wages basis.