Y.S. RANA, CHANDIGARH—With each hand movement, the piece of cloth came to alive. A piece of cloth was slowly revealing itself in a beautiful shapes, patterns and sizes. For most of use it might be embroidery, for those involved in the work it means life!
The empowerment Centre set up by the Chandigarh Administration to empower women belonging to economically weaker section of society to get on with life and giving them succor. In the recent past, the social welfare department toyed up with an idea to reach out to various organizations, institutes and schools to get stitching orders of dresses for students and workers. Equipped with one over-locking, 20 sewing and 17 embroidery machines, the seeks to combine training with jobs While talking to Daily Post Rajni Gupta, Company Secretary, said it not only provided employment to women from slums and colonies but also imparted them product-oriented training streams ranging from stitching, embroidery and dress designing to beauty culture.
She further said that the initiative has not only landed enough job work to the inmates of the Centre but also a revenue booster dose to it. The first of its kind initiave inaugurated by Gen (Retd) S.F Rodrigues, the then Punjab Governor in 2008 now has graduated into a development model. The Centre is engaged in stitching on order, baby night suits; nighties; kurtis; aprons; pillow covers; napkins; rubber bands; curtains; lady suits and pants and shirts of kids including skirts and shirts of girls. “The stitching charges here are less than 40-50 per cent compared to market rates,” she said.
The earnings have taken a quantum in all these years. From merely revenue of Rs 2.81 lakh in 2008-09 the earnings of the Centre jumped to Rs 31.66 lakh in 2015-16. During the last fiscal the Centre has stitched dresses of 18,153 children of 500 Aganwaris across the city. It has also got order from GMCH-32 of Rs 2 lakh. It is also revealed that inmates of the Centre were being in the ratio of 70:30.
At present, 48 girls are working in the Centre. So far, more than 200 women have been trained. While one is now working in Australia and majority of them have started their own dress designing and stitching business. The centre has also started training beauty culture and the course of dress designing is much sought, says Rajnit Gupta, In Charge of the Centre.
With a view to facilitating marketing of their products, the department time to time arranged for marketing stalls at various functions. The department has also created a corpus of fund which is being used to pay for the raw material needed at the Centre. “After paying women for the work they do, the rest of the money from the sale of their products is ploughed back into the fund,” said the official of the department.
The initiative of the Administration though not exactly of the magnitude of ‘Lijjat Papad,” yet a similar-looking success story is being scripted by the Centre.