After engg units, garment sector seeks ind area status

LUDHIANA: The city’s garment industry wants that areas like Kali Sadak, Govind Vihar Complex and Nehru Vihar — where most of their garment factories are located — be declared as industrial areas.
The demand comes at a time when the light engineering parts manufacturers are already protesting against the state government over the masterplan row, seeking that mixed land use (MLU) areas near Gill Road be declared as industrial area. More than 70% of industries producing bicycles, sewing machines, auto parts, fastners, hand tools, and machinery are located near Gill Road.
Notably, these garment industries located near the Chandigarh Road are also built in MLU areas, but the garment sector has not yet joined the industrialists’ protest outside the District Industries Centre (DIC), Ludhiana.
The garment industrialists claimed that their factories are non-polluting, since they only manufacture garments from already processed cloth, so there’s no environmental harm in declaring the areas as industrial.
Vipan Vinayak, president of Knit and Fab Hoseiry Association said, “More than 500 units manufacturing different types of garment are located in Kali Sadak, Govind Vihar Complex, Nehru Vihar and nearby areas. These factories are totally green units and no pollution is caused by us because we only make garments — neither do we manufacture the fabric or cloth, nor do we do any kind of processing — we only do the stitching work. Therefore, all such areas with 100% environmental friendly units deserve to be declared industrial from their present status of MLU areas. ”
Vinayak claimed that 90% of buildings in these areas were factories, with only about 10% residential homes. Besides, he added that most of these homes belong to factory owners or those dependant on the factories for their livelihood.
Besides, the garment industry has also written a letter to Punjab local bodies minister Dr Inderbir Singh Nijjar, seeking his intervention into the matter, and gave him a two-week ultimatum.
Vinayak said, “In case no action is taken on our request within the next two weeks, we will contemplate resorting to means like agitation or even taking a legal recourse.”
Meanwhile, the business associations from Gill Road area continued with their protest against the state government outside the DIC on Thursday, in a group of four businessmen led by FICO president Gurmeet Singh Kular.