Tirupati: Covid hits power looms of Mini Manchester hard

Tirupati: Nagari and surrounding village clusters in the Chittoor district which were called 'Mini Manchester' of AP have fallen silent now, thanks to the lockdown. In all, 40,000 power looms were running round the clock producing fabrics like cotton shirt material, chudidhar material and lungies.

Availability of uninterrupted electricity supply and manpower are not helpful in these circumstances in running the show, it seems.

Now all the power looms are idle and thousands of workers are without work in the area. Nagari is one of the prime locations for the textile industry in AP. These looms have been exporting fabrics to Chennai, USA and other Asian countries as well as Chirala in AP.

Most of the exports were being sent to Chennai and some other places like Tirupur , by road and trains. Raw material usually comes from Tamil Nadu for these looms. Due to the lockdown all the raw materials like yarn, colour chemicals and others which were not in supply by the companies in Tamil Nadu, the owners could not run the machines even with the skeleton workforce.

More than 10,000 families are working in the cottage textile industries in Nagari town, Chintala Patteda, Yekambarakuppa, AK Agraharam and Sattravada village clusters.

The loss of turnover is said to be around Rs 70 crore. In normal days power loom workers used to get paid Rs 12 per meter of cloth weaving. This segment has not been included in any relief programme of any government and is dire straits.

A cottage power loom unit owner, K Gangadharam of YekambaraKuppa village, said: "For the last 20 days, we had stopped the operations and asked the workers not to come for work.