Lack of orders since Marchbroke our back, say weavers

Varanasi: The weavers had been protesting against the new power tariff structure, but the impact of lockdown has been severe and they are now in extreme distress.
TOI had reported a month ago when power dues of over 19,000 connections to powerloom units had gone above Rs 285 crore and over 150 weavers had submitted applications to disconnect their supply.
Electricity department’s superintending engineer of Varanasi circle-I Deepak Agrawal told TOI on Tuesday, “Weavers were paying fixed charges till 2019. As per a government order, from January 1 they had to pay commercial rates after consuming subsidised units from 120 to 240.”
Noman Abdin of Koyala Bazar said, “A weavers operating a machine with jacquard earns Rs 5,000 and around Rs 35,000 on non-jacquard machine, running them round the clock in a month. Now, with new power tariff, even big weaving unit owners are in serious trouble.”
Many weavers even disposed their machines to scrap dealers of Chowkaghat, Jalalipura and Kajjakpura area.
Jagdish Prasad Jaiswal, a scrap dealer in Jalalipura, said, “Till March, one or two outdated or damaged machines came to us per month. But in last three months, on an average one machine is sold every alternate day.”
Mohd Arif showed his vacant hall at Hanuman Phatak after selling five powerloom machines last month and said, “We did not have any order after March 22 while our dues were not being cleared by Gaddidars and Girista (traders and middlemen). Power dues were also accumulating while feeding our families was proving to be difficult. So, we decided to sell the machines. I sold the five machines for Rs one lakh and have started a general merchant shop now.”
Assistant director, handlooms, Nitesh Dhawan said that he has apprised the state government of the crisis and hardships being faced by the weavers.