Agra jewellery units move out of the city

Fed up with growing restrictions on their operations inside the city limits owing to the revised pollution norms, the imitation jewellery-manufacturing units of Agra are all set to move to the city border in a new 45-acre industrial park, expected to come up this year.

Speaking to Business Standard, Nyay Dutt Sharma, secretary, Agra Imitation Jewellery Manufacturing Association, said about 60 imitation jewellery manufacturing units were linked with the association, while the number of other-linked industrial units manufacturing chains & other raw material for the jewellery is almost 300.

Lately, however, such units have come under the spyglass of the UP Pollution Control Board, which has restricted the units from releasing their effluents directly into the water, besides other severe restrictions that have come into effect, after the new pollution code in Agra was implemented to protect the Taj Mahal from pollution.

According to Sharma, the units have been functioning in Agra for the past 50 years and thousands of local residents are employed in the units, a large number of which are still in primitive stages of mechanisation, leaning heavily on manual labour.

He said following the Pollution Control Board guidelines, a number of jewellery units had installed effluent treatment plants (ETP) and a number of them had to shut down.

However, the restrictions on their operationare still growing, as a result of which the association has decided to shift such units out of the city limits.

He said the association would shortly purchase a 45-acre plot on the Agra-Delhi highway near Keetham Lake, and the industry owners are collecting a considerable sum to purchase the plot.

The association has also raised the issue in various meetings of the National Chamber of Commerce, UP & Jila Udyog Bandhu, and these organisations have assured the association of their full support to the chain factory owners being displaced from the town.

However, the shifting of these units from Agra will also pose a grave problem for the thousands of unskilled labourers, who work day-in-and-day-out in such factories located deep in the city.

Being a largely manual job, the task of linking and cleaning of chains is performed mostly by women belonging to the lower income group of the said area, which forms a large part of their monthly household income.

With the movement of the industrial units from inside the city, such households will lose out on quite a significant share of their income to the "Taj Protection Mission".