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| Sunday, 28 August 2005 |
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Call to revive handloom industry From Don Asoka Wijewardena in Ambalangoda Sri Lanka's handloom industry seems to be in a deteriorating state for want of raw materials and poor production methods have caused numerous problems in market development, said Post Graduate Institute of Management Director Prof. Gunapala Nanayakkara at a media conference on "Reviving the Handloom Sector, A Forgotten Art of Lanka". He was speaking after opening the Peshakala Handloom Weaving Centre in Ambalangoda last week. Prof. Nanayakkara said there was no point in trying to compete with large-scale production that came from the colourful Indian handlooms and added that even the efforts made in the past focused on creating only an image rather than finding a niche product in the market that Sri Lanka could fulfill. He also said that most of the women in the Ambalangoda area were engaged in the coir industry before the tsunami which not only took the lives of many but also changed the lives of the thousands and their very existence and means of survival. The setting up of the Peshakala project began as a tsunami livelihood restoration project under the PIM Disaster Management Program and it was a bold step to direct 100 MBA final year students into a completely new project. Referring to Sri Lanka's handlooms, Prof. Nanayakkara said that "Sri Lanka's handloom industry needed to have proper markets and quality raw materials had to be imported since the supply of fabrics depended totally on manual output which was poor and the productivity was also very low. " Therefore finding niche markets that require high skilled labour content products would be the solution," he said. Peshakala Lanka Managing Director Linda Speldewinde said that the Peshakala Handloom Weaving Project was a fully-fledged operation employing 15 tsunami-hit women in the community of Akurala, Kahawa in Ambalangoda area where most women were engaged in the coir industry earning a monthly income of Rs. 2,000. Speldewinde explained that she took the initiative to help women in the Ambalangoda area for an alternative livelihood bearing in mind the importance of approaching tsunami recovery in the overall content of poverty reduction, development in consultation and with the participation of those affected. Referring to the objectives of the Peshakala project, Speldewinde said that the key objectives of the project were to improve the social structure and empower the village women ensuring a minium monthly income of Rs. 6,000 to Rs. 12,000 per weaver to revive the moribund handloom industry in Sri Lanka through handloom, design and product development, marketing products internationally, getting orders and duplicating the Akurala model centre in other villages including others along with the tsunami-affected Southern coastline of Marthunnai, Ariyampath and Pudukude in the East, to make Sri Lanka the preferred source of exporter for high labour intensity handloom products such as cotton Ikats, chashmere and other wool and silk mix, specialised handloom fabric and finished products to Europe and to train all the weavers in wool and wool/silk blended fabrics, in creating a niche market and a niche supply situation different from India. |
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