Under ‘SAATHI’ initiative, Power Ministries join hands to help small scale industries

New Delhi, October 25: Under the new initiative ‘SAATHI’ (Sustainable and Accelerated Adoption of efficient Textile technologies to Help small Industries), Ministries of Power and Textiles came together with help small-scale industries. The SAATHI initiative will be jointly implemented by Energy Efficiency Services Limited EESL and the office of the Textile Commissioner on a pan-India basis.

 

Under this initiative, EESL would procure energy efficient Powerlooms, motors and Rapier kits in bulk and provide them to the small and medium Powerloom units at no upfront cost. To kick-start, the implementation, cluster-wise demonstration projects and workshops will be organized in key clusters such as Erode, Surat, Ichalkaranji, etc.

The use of this efficient equipment would result in energy savings and cost savings to the unit owner and he would repay in instalments to EESL over a 4 to 5 year period.

With a view to upgrading the technology, the Government of India has been implementing the INSITU upgradation of plain Powerlooms as part of Power Tex India under which plain Powerlooms are attached with process control equipment leading to higher productivity, better quality and more than 50 percent additional value realization. So far 1.70 lakhs plain Powerlooms have been upgraded under the scheme, with a total Government of India subsidy of Rs. 186 Crores.

The Powerloom sector in India is predominantly an unorganized sector and has a large number of micro and small units which produce 57 percent of the total cloth in the country. There are 24.86 lakhs Powerloom units in this country, most of whom use obsolete technology.