Agra footwear faces skilled-manpower crunch
Vishal Sharma
New Delhi/ Agra Even though the footwear industry in Agra has been growing at an unprecedented rate, industry analysts believe this growth rate will be short-lived, considering the acute shortage of trained labour for footwear manufacture that the industry is facing presently.
There are close to 75 export-oriented footwear units currently in Agra and most of these units are facing similar problems - shortage of quality leather, lack of export facilities, unavailability of a footwear design studio and the overwhelming problem of the lack of adequate numbers of trained labour.
According to the Agra Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Chamber (AFMEC) sources, while most of the operational problems could be sorted out with ease, it was the shortage of atleast 15000 trained labourers within the current year for the export oriented units, that would ultimately pull the Agra footwear units back from the developmental track.
Blaming the footwear training institutes and government policies as the source of this problem, Puran Dawar, Managing Director, Dawar Footwear Industries claimed that earlier, the footwear manufacturers never faced such problems as there was an automatic generation of trained labour in the form of the children of the footwear workers who came with their fathers to the manufacturing units and learned the art with them, on the spot.
He said that presently, the footwear industry of the town was churning up foreign exchange worth Rs. 1200 crores every year with almost 60 thousand workers producing close to 1.5 lakh pairs of shoes every day. On an average, he said, a shoe passed 150 hands during its manufacture in 7-8 steps and at present, the daily industrial production average of about 2 pairs of shoes per worker was being over shot by a huge margin, which needed to be brought down at 2 pairs per worker, if the quality had to be maintained and for that purpose, there was an urgent need for another 15 thousand skilled laborers in the industry.
The shortage was largely affecting the shoe upper manufacture as it was a completely manual process from cutting the leather to pasting and stitching the finished leather on the sole. "With the government declaring the presence of children inside a footwear unit as tantamount to promoting child labour, the kids of the footwear manufactures had been cut-off from this invaluable and natural source of learning", he said.
Besides, he said, while the footwear training institutes were stressing more on training footwear technicians and lower & middle-management candidates instead of training labourers, the Umbrella project launched by the central government had also failed to generate quality laborers creating an acute shortage of at least 15,000 labourers in the city's footwear export units.
As a result, the exporters were being forced to employ unskilled labour and outsource the shoe-upper and sole manufacture to different cottage units instead of producing them in-house but these sub-contractors were also unable to fill-in the huge gap in the demand and supply that would be created once the industry began receiving bulk supply orders from large international clients that were beginning to break away from China and were looking at India as their new prospective supplier.
He said that AFMEC had suggested to the state government that it could provide all necessary technical know-how and training faculties if the government agreed on letting the footwear manufacturers utilize the infrastructure of the state-run schools between 4 pm - 7 pm to train willing candidates from class-8 upwards, in the art of footwear manufacturers for which, they could be provided with a stipend of Rs. 200 per candidate as had been already proposed by CLRI.
"The proposal had a double benefit as while it provided free training to the aspirants, it also generated future workers for the industry", he said.
But refuting the claims made by the footwear manufacturers, SN Ganguly, Director, Central Footwear Training Institute Agra said that the shortage was largely due to the low wages and perks offered by the footwear units to the workers and instead of thinking of spending their lives in a 3-4 thousand job, the young generation had now become ambitious, looking for a better-paying managerial post.
There are close to 75 export-oriented footwear units currently in Agra and most of these units are facing similar problems - shortage of quality leather, lack of export facilities, unavailability of a footwear design studio and the overwhelming problem of the lack of adequate numbers of trained labour.
According to the Agra Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Chamber (AFMEC) sources, while most of the operational problems could be sorted out with ease, it was the shortage of atleast 15000 trained labourers within the current year for the export oriented units, that would ultimately pull the Agra footwear units back from the developmental track.
Blaming the footwear training institutes and government policies as the source of this problem, Puran Dawar, Managing Director, Dawar Footwear Industries claimed that earlier, the footwear manufacturers never faced such problems as there was an automatic generation of trained labour in the form of the children of the footwear workers who came with their fathers to the manufacturing units and learned the art with them, on the spot.
He said that presently, the footwear industry of the town was churning up foreign exchange worth Rs. 1200 crores every year with almost 60 thousand workers producing close to 1.5 lakh pairs of shoes every day. On an average, he said, a shoe passed 150 hands during its manufacture in 7-8 steps and at present, the daily industrial production average of about 2 pairs of shoes per worker was being over shot by a huge margin, which needed to be brought down at 2 pairs per worker, if the quality had to be maintained and for that purpose, there was an urgent need for another 15 thousand skilled laborers in the industry.
The shortage was largely affecting the shoe upper manufacture as it was a completely manual process from cutting the leather to pasting and stitching the finished leather on the sole. "With the government declaring the presence of children inside a footwear unit as tantamount to promoting child labour, the kids of the footwear manufactures had been cut-off from this invaluable and natural source of learning", he said.
Besides, he said, while the footwear training institutes were stressing more on training footwear technicians and lower & middle-management candidates instead of training labourers, the Umbrella project launched by the central government had also failed to generate quality laborers creating an acute shortage of at least 15,000 labourers in the city's footwear export units.
As a result, the exporters were being forced to employ unskilled labour and outsource the shoe-upper and sole manufacture to different cottage units instead of producing them in-house but these sub-contractors were also unable to fill-in the huge gap in the demand and supply that would be created once the industry began receiving bulk supply orders from large international clients that were beginning to break away from China and were looking at India as their new prospective supplier.
He said that AFMEC had suggested to the state government that it could provide all necessary technical know-how and training faculties if the government agreed on letting the footwear manufacturers utilize the infrastructure of the state-run schools between 4 pm - 7 pm to train willing candidates from class-8 upwards, in the art of footwear manufacturers for which, they could be provided with a stipend of Rs. 200 per candidate as had been already proposed by CLRI.
"The proposal had a double benefit as while it provided free training to the aspirants, it also generated future workers for the industry", he said.
But refuting the claims made by the footwear manufacturers, SN Ganguly, Director, Central Footwear Training Institute Agra said that the shortage was largely due to the low wages and perks offered by the footwear units to the workers and instead of thinking of spending their lives in a 3-4 thousand job, the young generation had now become ambitious, looking for a better-paying managerial post.
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