To mitigate the impact of demonetisation faced by the textile units including garmenting units to make payment of wages to workers, the government has asked textile units to bring the textile worker into the banking system.

The textile units are asked to facilitate, on a “priority basis”, opening of bank accounts for their employees and make cashless payments through unified payments interface (UPI).

The textile and apparel sector is the second largest employment provider in the country and a a large segment of the workers are traditionally being paid in cash as they didn’t have bank accounts.

In 2015-16, the sector had employed nearly 51 million people directly and 68 million people indirectly.

As per the directive, textile units will now have to register the details of workers who already have bank accounts. This will ensure payment of wages through the bank transfer mode,” the official said.

The government has already conducted workshops to guide weavers on how to download and register for UPI in textile clusters. An awareness camp on this issue was held in Hyderabad a few days ago.

The textile ministry is in the process of compiling data on the total number of bank accounts and daily updates are being sought from industry associations.