Silk saree production hit in Kancheepuram

Silk saree production has been hit in Kancheepuram as cooperative societies are unable to procure gold coated zari. Weavers said that they have been waiting for zari since December.

“The zari factory stopped production in December end as they did not get the silver strands from Surat. With gold and silver prices soaring, a decision was taken to decrease the silver content from 40% to 30% and that of gold from 0.5% to 0.4%. Though weavers opposed this, the government went ahead with this decision. But even that has not paid off,” said Jeeva of the Kamatchi Amman Cooperative Society.

He said that since weavers did not get zari, they were unable to weave silk sarees and have not gotten their wages for over two months now. “People are unable to pay rents due to this. It is a loss of about ₹30,000 per weaver for two months.”

Viswanathan of Anna Cooperative Society said that with weavers not being able to produce silk sarees, the various cooperatives in the town were losing customers. “It is now the wedding season and people from all over usually flock to Kancheepuram to buy quality sarees from the cooperatives. But now buyers are moving to private vendors,” he said.

Weavers are hoping that the government will step in and procure quality zari so that production of silk sarees can resume.