2 days ago
Free power supply to handloom and power looms commences
Tirupati: The much-awaited free power supply to Handloom and Powerloom units commenced from Thursday coinciding with 11th National Handloom Day, benefitting thousands of weavers in Tirupati district.
Accordingly, the Handloom units will get free power supply of 200 units monthly and Powerloom units will get up to 500 units.
On the occasion a rally was taken out in Venkatagiri, which has pre-dominant weavers population town in the district and famous for Venkatagiri cotton sarees.
Venkatagiri MLA Kurugondla Ramakrishna led the rally and district Collector Dr S Venkateswar also participated as a chief guest. Later, a meeting was held in Padmasali Bhavan in the town.
Addressing the meeting, MLA K Ramakrishna said Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Education Minister Nara Lokesh are giving top priority in extending various government schemes to weavers to boost up the marketing, keeping in view the huge demand for Venkatagiri weavers' handloom products. People also on their part should extensively use handloom products to support the weavers and the government is also keen on extending minimum schemes for them, he added.
Collector Dr S Venkateswar said more than 6,000 weavers families are depending on Handloom and Powerloom mostly in Venkatagiri, Srikalahasti, Guduru and Narayanavanam in the district. Venkatagiri silk, cotton, Jandari sarees have good demand in the country, while wedding sarees produced by the weavers of Narayanavanam and Dhotis and towels in Puttur are popular handloom products.
The government, apart from extending NTR Bharosa pension scheme, also providing Rs 4,000 monthly benefitting 5,712 weavers in the district. It also introduced free power supply to support them.
Loans including Rs 1.92 crore to Poleramma weavers cluster in Venkatagiri benefitting 182 weavers, Rs 90 lakh to Srikalahasteeswara small cluster and Rs 1 crore to Narayanavanam small cluster benefitting 171 weavers were sanctioned.
The Collector stated that the Central government also recognised Venkatagiri weavers artistic skills by honouring a weaver, Lanka Srinivasulu with golden award under 'one district one product'.
On the occasion, MLA Ramakrishna and Collector Venkateswar disbursed cheques to weavers, provided by various banks as loans to improve business.
Handlooms AD Ramesh, LDM Ravi Kumar, Handloom Union leaders Gangadhar, Viswanath, Lakshmipathi, Satyanarayana, Rajeswar Rao were present.
