“Actually a few mills adopted a system of paying gratuity even if a woman worker decided to leave after a period of three years, though it is normally payable after five years of service,. A few mills have opened institutes of higher learning in their mills, from which girls have passed out with flying colours, with one, even clearing the tough IAS exams.

“However, now in order to ensure a better compliance levels amongst the member companies of SIMA, we are planning to introduce a rating system on the same lines as ‘Disha’ a compliance program initiated by Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC). We will publish a ‘Code of Conduct’ guideline for these mills and SIMA will rate them on the levels of compliance they are able to achieve.

“I can say with conviction that the compliance levels in India are much better than in many other countries and again Tamil Nadu among all Indian states, has the best compliance levels. It would not be proper to tarnish the whole textile and apparel sector in the state for the aberrations of a few, who number between just 2-5 percent of the whole industry in the state”, Dr Selvaraju concluded by saying.

However the unanimous opinion of representatives of global apparel brands was, that the textile and apparel industry in these two clusters need to work together to ensure higher levels of compliance among all units, to remove misgivings in the minds of the NGOs and apparel retailers.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India