Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 21: Advisor to Governor, K Skandan, today called for rolling out an effective mechanism for quality check, integration networking and certification of artisans produce and further stressed on their capacity building through various digital media.
The Advisor was speaking during a meeting he convened to review the working of Handicraft and Handloom Departments and allied Corporations here.
The meeting was attended by Director Handicrafts, Inderjeet, Director Handloom, Rubina Kousar, Secretary/ Chief Executive Officer, J&K Khadi & Village Industries Board, Rashid Ahmad Qadri, Managing Director Handloom Corporation Rakesh Sharma, MD Industries Ltd Javid Iqbal, MD JK Handicrafts Corporation Jasvinder Singh Dua, Nodal Officer, World Bank Project, Sajid Nazir and other concerned officers.
Interacting with the officers, the Advisor said that necessary steps must be taken towards developing a mechanism to certify the artisans produce and its quality check. He asked them to bring more innovative ideas into execution and make optimal use of available resources and infrastructure to achieve the desired results.
“Artisans must have an identity and shall be provided with better market place to sell their product so that they can get better returns,” he said. He further called for tie-ups with universities to get best practices into play to make the sector more profitable.
The Advisor also stressed on capacity building of artisans and asked the concerned functionaries to adopt a cluster approach and develop training centers of excellence for the artisans to teach them packaging, labeling and other post production work and introduction of crash courses in these centers.
He further asked them to engage mobile resource persons to teach the artisans who will work as official interface.
The meeting also held detailed discussion on creation of local centers, certification, self-certification, category wise registration of artisans, cost audits, developing clusters, creation of virtual centre and enlisting of entire product range, sales and production analysis and many alike.
The Advisor also enquired about the activities undertaken by the concerned departments and allied Corporations and emphasized on the need to evolve synergy between the departments to develop an encouraging environment for artisans.
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