Textile Industry Minister, Chaudhry Mushtaq Ali Cheema has said that the Government is conscious of the issues of women development and is fully committed to the enhancement of the status of women on the grrounds of equity and equality Inaugurating the two moths Stitching Machine Operators Training (SMOT) Programme at Chenab Limited.
Which was jointly arranged by the Textile Garments Skill Development Board and Ministry of Textile Industry, here on Saturday. he announced that 75 percent quota would be given to women for this job oriented programme.
He urged the textile sector to focus on value addition to yield maximum benefit of textile package, which would be implement with the total cost of Rs 25 billion. Federal Minister further asked industrialists and exporters to do research and study the world trends to increase competitiveness of their goods to get better share of market.
He explained that a skill development programme had been launched for overcoming the shortage of adept workers in the textile industry. Under this programme, some Textile Units have been declared as training institutes, in which any unemployed youth can come and get training as machine operator. The government was paying a sum of Rs 2,500 to each trainee as stipend coupled with pick and drop facility under Research and Development Support Programme.
Furthermore ensured job was offered to them after completion of their training. The programme was aimed at providing productive workers to country's textile industry enabling it to compete effectively, he added. He said that textile industry was the core industry of the country and due to textile vision 2005 adopted by the government had provided substantial development to the sector.
Cheema said the Export Oriented Sector needed to strive to take full advantage of the government policies including recently announced Textile Package 2006. He added that the government had also decided to take steps to increase core competence in Textile Ministry by hiring experts, which would go a long way in further developing their important sector of the economy.
He further said that the garment cities of Lahore and Faisalabad would be made functional within a period of one year. The buildings equipped with every facility would be provided to industrialists in garment cities on lease basis. They would just need to install machinery and start business there, he added.
The main purpose was to make establishment of textile factory including small ancillary units cheaper by saving major portion of investment in acquiring land and building.
Presenting the Outlook of SMOT Programme, Chief Executive, Chenab Limited, Mian Muhammad Latif said that this programme had been devised to cater to the need of the textile industry in the field of Apparel Fashions and Home Textiles. It was meant to build skilled workforce for country's apparel fashions and home textiles industry, which was a male-female combined programme with 75 percent allocation to females-aiming at reduction of unemployment and building of skilled workforce.
The training course covers basic techniques of sewing, handling of stitching machines and knowledge of their accessories with methodology of different sewing operations, he added.
Mian Latif mentioned that after enhancing expertise in the field of sewing, Chenab limited would be able to confidently compete with major business rivals China, India and Bangladesh in apparel fashions and home textile fields.
He pointed out that country's apparel industry was currently faced with many formidable challenges such as shortage of skilled labour, technology advancement and a cut-throat competition in the global market.
Mian Latif hoped that our apparel industry should develop their human resource in an effective manner by providing their workers on-job-training to cope with the fast changing apparel fashion scenario in the world and upcoming challenges to the apparel industry.