• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Sajeev Kumar V.

ALAPUZHA, Nov. 25

THE UNDP-assisted project initiated by the Coir Board on technology transfer, modernisation and capacity building in the Indian coir sector is getting more popular among the traditional workers, enabling them to generate better employment opportunities and enhancing the wages of the women workers.

The impact of the activities undertaken under the programme so far has helped to modernise the industry to face the challenges emerging in the international market, Mr Christy Fernandez, Chairman, Coir Board, told a group of visiting journalists.

Describing the programme as a ``silent revolution'' in the traditional coir sector, the Chairman said the UNDP project had helped in providing a exposure to a sector which had hitherto remained uninitiated to new concepts in the context of emerging global challenges.

The technology transfer and capacity building enabled higher utilisation of raw material, value-added production, especially for export market and new entrepreneurship. The industry, which was traditionally confined to Kerala, is being extended to several other States for value-added export production as well as for domestic market at competitive prices, the Chairman said.

The stakeholders identified under the project have been fully integrated into the system and the women workers who were trained in modern equipments are able to make gainful employment out of coir industry, he added.

As part of modernisation, the Chairman said modern looms and equipments were procured and installed in the stakeholders premises so as to motivate the prospective entrepreneurs in the clusters to take up such activities.

Under the project, equipments such as semi-automatic loom, automatic spinning machines, motorised ratts, traditional motorised ratts etc worth Rs 130 lakh have been procured and installed in the clusters. Further, about 740 motorised ratts were also retrofitted so as to make it efficient for giving better production, he added.

The coir industry, according to Mr Fernandez, has been beset with problems of low productivity, poor technology transfer, slow modernisation and insufficient capacity building to harness its full potential. Hence an appropriate intervention mechanism in the form of a focussed project was found to be necessary.

Keeping in this mind, the board prepared the project and submitted it to UNDP, which was approved with a financial outlay of $8,46,000. The main objectives included transfer of technologies, upgradation of production and process technologies, building capacity within in the Board to meet the challenges emerging out of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation.

The results of some of the research and development works carried out by the board were significant inputs for modernisation of the sector for eco-friendly and economical process technologies. It had developed motorised ratts and semi-mechanised looms to achieve higher productivity without serious displacement of labour, he said.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail
Comment on this article to BLFeedback@thehindu.co.in

Stories in this Section
Going bananas!

Copyright © 2002, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line