Excelsior Correspondent
—Excelsior/Shakeel
Srinagar, Mar 13: Scores of Pashmina weavers today staged a protest against the failure of Government to stop the manufacture of spurious machine made Pashmina shawls.
The local artisans alleged that scores of influential traders with political connections have introduced spinning machines and power looms despite a ban imposed on their use by the Government.
“Some businessman have brought power looms and spinning machines to weave the Pashmina which is badly denting the image of handmade Pashmina and is earning a bad name for the trade. All this is happening with the aid of some tainted officials who deliberately turn a blind eye towards this grave issue. We have time and again protested against this illegal act but our pleas have fallen on deaf ears”, a shawl weaver alleged.
The weavers said that with an aim to check the authenticity of genuine Kashmiri Pashmina, a testing centre had been set up by the Union Ministry of Commerce at Crafts Development Institute (CDI) here in Baghi Ali Mardan Khan. “However, the centre is there for namesake only and no quality checks of any sort are carried out there,” they said.
The weavers said the establishment of testing center is useless as it was never started.”The only thing there is a building with a bunch of fancy equipment inside but it was never put to work, no quality checking has ever taken place there, it’s wastage of resources,” they said and demanded an end to the practice of machine-made shawls.
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