KCR Kits face saree crunch

District administration approaches handloom weavers to supply sarees

Mahabubnagar: The much-hyped ‘KCR Kits’ to encourage pregnant women, who deliver in government hospitals, has hit a roadblock in the district due to non-availability of sarees in the Kits. However, to overcome this short coming, District Collector Ronald Rose has approached handloom weavers in the district and asked them to supply sarees to KCR Kit scheme in the district.

As part of the KCR Kit scheme, the government is giving about 15 kinds of different items like baby soaps, baby powder, baby oils, towels, napkins, mosquito net, bed and two sarees for the new mother, worth about Rs 2,000.

But with the shortage of sarees, the healthcare officials implementing this scheme have been distributing the Kits without sarees. “Because of the shortage of sarees, we are providing the remaining items that are useful for the baby. Very soon the government will procure the sarees also and will be distributed to all the newly delivered mothers,” informed a senior official in the Mahabubnagar General Hospital, who is in-charge of KCR Kits.

Commemorating the National Handloom Day in the district, the Collector held a meeting with handloom workers at the handloom cloths market in Newtown on Monday. He said that handloom cloths have gained a great popularity and prominence across the world.

However, the handloom workers must continuously improve the efficiency on par with the international standards. For this the Collector had promised to provide training facilities to the handloom workers in the district.

“Handloom weavers of the district have been contributing their best efforts, but they should develop more skills and learn new designs from time to time to attract the customers and also to compete with the global markets. For this we are developing a comprehensive planning to train these workers and we would buy handloom woven sarees from the weavers’ society from within the district,” said the Collector.

Not just for supplying sarees to the KCR Kit, the district administration was also charting out a comprehensive planning to uplift the handloom weavers’ community to provide better livelihood opportunities in the district. As part of this, the district administration has also proposed to procure blankets and bedsheets, for social welfare hostels and other required materials from the district weavers’ society.

“We have decided to take up a comprehensive planning for procuring cloth materials from the handloom societies, which would not only help lift the lively hoods of the handloom weavers but at the same time, meet our requirements.

We will provide training and all facilities to the Mahabubnagar handloom weavers society and ensure that it will be developed on par with the handloom market at Koti in Hyderabad,” added the collector. To encourage Handlooms in the district, the district administration has also put a condition that all the government employees must wear only handloom woven cloths on every Monday.

Later the Collector felicitated 20 handloom workers, prominent among them include Boga Monohar, Nanda Kumar, Venkataiah, Krishnaiah and others among them.