Women are being encouraged to enter the workforce to tide over the crisis.
Agra footwear units are facing labour shortage. The supply of skilled and semi-skilled labour has failed to match the growth in production of the industry. Footwear exports from the city also record 20-25 per cent growth every year, thus leading to further rise in demand for labour.
Several attempts to increase the supply of labour, including the much-publicised “umbrella project” and a technological tie-up with Microsoft, have failed to deliver results.
Industry sources claim the current demand for skilled and semi-skilled labour is close to 50,000. There is an immediate need for a workforce of around 15,000 to take advantage of the spurt in business generated by the opening of the US market for Indian footwear.
To tide over the crisis, the industry is trying to encourage women to enter the workforce. Women make up almost 50 per cent of the population of the town. Puran Dawar, managing director, Dawar Footwear Industries, said that contrary to the leather industry in Southern India, the Agra footwear industry has been completely male-oriented, with women choosing to stay away from this sector even though working in the leather industry was quite similar to the garment industry, which employed women in large numbers.
Women were reluctant to work in the industry because there was lack of initiative to train them and bring them into the workforce, he added.
The Central Footwear Training Institute (CFTI) in Agra has been churning out about 100 trainees every year in the skilled labour category, but this is insufficient in view of the present demand.
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To promote young girls in the sector, the Agra Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association has developed a project with the CFTI for running 3-month duration courses that could produce thousands of semi-skilled labourers each year.
For the training, the footwear units have provided material like scrap leather, machines etc. to the CFTI to enable the institute to train women in the trade of leather stitching, grading and cutting. Dawar claimed that being a labour-intensive industry, the footwear units of the town could easily train sufficient number of labourers for their own purposes utilising the provisions made in the Apprentice Act, 1961.
The Act allows hiring trainees in numbers of up to 20 percent of the total labour strength in the unit. But the labour department did not allow the leather units to take in trainees charging the unit owners of exploiting the labourers. If the unjustified restriction imposed by the labour department could be lifted, the labour crisis in Agra leather industry could be easily resolved, he added.
Agra produces close to 150,000 footwear pairs per day. There are 75-80 export oriented units in the city, which earn foreign exchange worth almost Rs 1,500 crore every year. Over the years, the increased demand by these export oriented units has also led to an aggravation of the labour crisis.