Union minister of labour and employment Bandaru Dattatreya at a press conference in Hyderabad said that as the Centre has earmarked Rs 6,000 crore as a special package for textile and garment sector to take it on par with Bangladesh and Vietnam, creating textile parks in the country, helping in creation of infrastructure in textile sector, promoting fashion technology so as to give fillip to the production especially in small-scale industries. He urged the Telangana government to submit new proposals for further developing the textile industry and strengthen handloom industry in the state.

The approval for a special package for employment generation and promotion of exports in textile and apparel sector will be for the generation of one crore jobs in this industry over next three years and, of this, 75 per cent would be women.

The slew of measures included in the special package would promote employment generation, and help in social transformation through women empowerment, he said.

The Minister urged the Telangana government to send proposals in places like Warangal, Pochampalli, Narayanpet and Gadwal under the new initiatives, to take advantages of the special package. The guidelines issued by the Central government would be discussed with Telangana textiles minister soon.

Further, explaining the Employees Provident Fund Scheme Reforms initiated by the Union government, the minister said that the entire 12 percent of the employers contribution under the EPF for new employees of garment industry for the first three years, who are earning less than Rs15,000 per month would be borne by the Centre.

According to him, there will be no inoperative EPF accounts in the coming days and with the usage of latest technology, every PF account will be linked to UAN number and Aadhaar. The EPFO has settled all the pending cases as of now.