Industrialists demand textile park for Amritsar

Local businessmen associated with the textile industry have demanded that the Bhgwant Mann government in Punjab must renew its efforts to get a textile park allocated in this border district after the Union Government allocated seven mega textile parks to other states, ignoring Punjab.

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the setting up of seven PM MITRA (Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel) textile parks for states. The PM had announced the textile parks for Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

About two months ago, Union Commerce and Textiles Minister Piyush Goyal announced that the AAP-led Punjab government had withdrawn the application for textile park citing unavailability of land.

Textile manufacturers said that it amounted to injustice to the state which once dominated the textile sector in this part of the country. With this, the entire effort of the industry department to arrange for 400 acres of land in Ramdas had been frittered away.

Deepak Khanna, president of the Textile Manufacturers Association (TMA), an 87-year-old organisation with over 80 manufacturers as its members, stated that the state accounted for 23 per cent of national cotton production which would be processed here. Had the state been allotted a PM MITRA mega textile park, it would have boosted the indigenous industries in line with 5F (Farm to fibre to factory to fashion to foreign) vision.

Naresh Johar, a senior citizen, said Amritsar has the units of all the three wings of textiles. These are spinning, weaving, dyeing and processing.

There used to be several textile machinery manufacturing units. Many of them carved out a name across the country like raising machine, rotary press, milling machine and hollow cup.

Geographically, Amritsar is situated close to Himachal Pradesh where sheep wool is procured.

The city has the Punjab Institute of Textile Technology to provide trained candidates in all streams of textiles.

What is needed is the government’s will to translate all these available resources into success. Already, lopsided policies and an indifferent approach has dealt a heavy blow to local textile units.

Dayalbagh Cotton Spinning Mill, Puttalighar, used to be a government undertaking, directly managed by the National Textile Corporation. The mill along with Dhariwal Woollen Mill was declared sick due to the failure of the government to modernise their machinery. Similarly, there were 163 processing units functional here in 2000. Only 33 have now survived.