Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 14: A delegation of Pashmina exporters from J&K led by Dr Hina Bhat, Vice-Chairperson, KVIB met with Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport & Highways and Bhupender Yadav, Minister of Environment, Forest & Climate Change at their respective offices in New Delhi.
The ministers were apprised about the threat to Pashmina industry due to the wrong branding and identification of Pashmina shawls as Shahtoosh shawls. “This is causing huge losses to the Pashmina industry and to the country’s economy thereby making the Indian pashmina exporters lose credibility in the global market,” the delegation members told ministers.
The delegation members told Ministers that the existing Morphological microscopic tests used by wildlife department to study the suspected guard hair found in the shawls are outdated. They further said that due to this process of seizure, subsequent hardships, and long time taken to get the test results, many exporters have faced cancellation of orders and their reputation has been damaged resulting in loss of future orders too.
The exporters also stressed on using of latest testing technology like Scanning electron microscopes and DNA technology, lamenting that currently, no such test is conducted in wildlife labs and only the guard hair is tested which could even be a case of accidental contamination.
The team also recommended testing the entire fabric at CDI Lab in Kashmir, which is solely dedicated to the testing of Pashmina shawls or at Textile Committee lab. The exporters said that the procedures have caused the decline of 30% to 40 % of handmade Pashmina exports in recent years and have forced some of the exporters to either completely quit export of handmade shawls or choose cheaper machine made shawls.
Both ministers heard the grievance of the exporters and assured swift action on this matter by adopting the latest techniques
The delegation of exporters included Mubbashir Ahmed Shaw, Tariq Ahmed Dar, Imran Rashid Darzi, Bilal Ahmed Beigh, Naqeed Qazi, Abdul Manan Baba and other exporters.
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