Agra garment dealers on the move

Old garment market to cease functioning from Jan 1, 611 dealers to move to Sanjay Place

After almost three years of denial, garment dealers of Agra have decided to move into the new garment market in the Sanjay Place Commercial area of the town. The new garment market will become operational from January 1, 2006.

According to the chairman, Cloth Mercantile Association, Agra, T N Agarwal, 611 garment dealers of Agra had been allocated showrooms in 26 blocks of the newly constructed garment market in Sanjay Place.

All these dealers were at present running their businesses from a congested market in the old city that dated back to the Mughal days.

He said the location of the old garments market made it very difficult for the traders to add new features to their already congested showrooms, besides making it virtually impossible to unload new stocks at the showrooms from trucks that could not enter this market.

According to Agarwal, the garment market in Sanjay Place has been ready to being functioning since a long time now but some eleamentary infrastructural problems had dissuaded the garment traders from giving up their old, established showroom location and moving into the new market.

He said after the Agra Development Authority promised to clear these problems soon, a meeting of all 611 allottees of the new garment market was called, in which it was unanimously decided that the old garment market in the city shall cease functioning from the evening of December 31 and the garment dealers shall begin business in the new market with the dawn of the new year.

This decision taken by the garment dealers of Agra is being seen as a precursor to a major re-structuring of the city that includes the shifting of several major established industries of Agra to the city outskirts in compliance to the National Urban Renewal Mission (NURM).

Talking to Business Standard, Agra Divisional Commissioner Ashok Kumar said most of the major markets of Agra existed deep inside the old city which had become severely congested over the passage of time with the increase in the city's population.

He said that in view of the proposed restructuring of the city under NURM and other projects that were running simultaneously, it had become imperative to restrict the commercial activities in the city to some selected pockets that were open and easily accessible from all parts of the city, in the interest of development.

He said while the movement of the garment dealers was the first step in this direction, several other industries like artificial jewellery, petha, and shoes were still to be shifted and the administration hoped to complete this shifting process as soon as possible.