The Director of Handloom and Textile Department (H&T), Shailaja Ramaiyer chaired a meeting at the office of Joint Director of Handloom and Textile Department in Sircilla on Thursday with the owners of power loom units and Max Society members and stressed the need of modernisation of power loom units.

H&T department Additional Director Srinivas Reddy and IL&FS representative Chary, H&T Deputy Director Y Narayana and Joint Director Ashok Rao were present along with others.

Shailaja Ramaiyer at the meeting said that out of 23,000 of plain power loom units present in the district, only 5,400 units were upgraded till date. Still there are 17,600 units left in the district, which need to be upgraded, which requires Rs 70.4 crore for doing so.

She advised the owners of plain power loom units and Max Society members to send proposals for upgradation of plain and traditional power loom units by July 24 as both the State and Central governments had promised to give 50 percent subsidy each for modernisation of plain power loom units.

The owners had requested sanctioning of 4-centimeter automatic looms along with one work shed under ‘Worker to Owner Project’. Since the project is not under implementation, the owners are urged to first upgrade the plain power looms for which they are asked to send in their proposal by 24 July.