In major textile clusters like Coimbatore, Tirupur, Dindigul, migrant workers account for 30 to 90 per cent of the workforce. But textile mills face numerous problems in sourcing, mobilizing, recruiting and retaining migrant workers for a reasonable period.

To handle this situation, Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA) has started direct recruitment from Tripura. A job fair was organized by SIMA on April 25 to 26, 2018, at Agartala. Around 4,000 unemployed youth, both male and female, attended the job fair from various districts of Tripura. Eight member mills of SIMA participated in the fair and selected 1,635 candidates, out of which 1,371 were male and 264 were female candidates. This includes 20 physically challenged candidates.

This direct recruitment exercise is expected to help mills source the right candidates with a good background and enable the unemployed youth of Tripura find job opportunities in Tamil Nadu. SIMA will repeat the job fair exercise in Tripura and do a similar exercise in other states.

Tamil Nadu accounts for around 45 per cent of the spinning capacity, 70 per cent of the knitted garment manufacturing capacity and 22 per cent of the weaving capacity in India, and directly employs over 60 lakh people. However, the state started facing a labor shortage in the last decade due to an exponential growth in the manufacturing facility.