The government on Monday urged the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in textile industry to take advantage of the Apparel Export Promotion Council’s pan India programme on Compliance – DISHA (Driving Industry towards Sustainable Human Capital Advancement), which will make them more competitive and productive.
Inaugurating the programme in New Delhi on Monday, the Secretary, Ministry of Textiles, Kiran
Dhingra said, “This program encourages members to follow better social practices, which will give them a competitive edge in the global market where social compliance is increasingly becoming an important buying decision.”
She added that the programme will guide industry in meeting their compliance requirements through a set of orientation cum enrolment workshops.
“I am sure that the larger part of the industry is already compliant…In fact, in this country, the pattern of manufacturer in textile is more decentralized and small. I would request the management of DISHA to give greater attention in getting the smaller units in to their code,” she said.
It is essential to make these small units more competitive and productive via this
compliance programme, Dhingra added.
In an industry which is labour intensive, DISHA will aim to not just enhance productivity but will provide a better working environment to the workers, she added further.
In a similar tone, A Sakthivel, Chairman, Apparel Export Promotion Council also said, “This educative program will orient exporters about the compliance code guidelines and industry safety and will further help them to leverage this platform by gaining solutions in their audit
requirements.”
“It is envisaged that it will eventually reduce the burden of various exporters who are faced
with multiple auditing. DISHA programme has been successfully incepted in Tirupur, Bengaluru and Chennai,” he said.
“Besides Delhi today, we will have another workshop in Jaipur today too. With the enthusiasm seen among the exporters, we aim to achieve the target of covering 400 units by the end of the financial year. We are also coming up the stakeholder’s forum soon,” Sakthivel
added.
AEPC also said it is the first of its kind public private partnership programme as they have targeted of enrolling a total of 400 units by the end of this year and 2000 garment
factories by 2017, with focus on small exporters.
The programme is being funded by Ministry of Textiles, with 75% of the project cost coming from the Ministry.
Original Article: http://www.smetimes.in/smetimes/news/top-stories/2012/Feb/28/smes-to-benefit-from-aepcs-compliance-programme62447.html