Co-operative Society Limited at Bargarh in Sambalpur.
Telegraph picture
Sambalpur, Nov. 20: The scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes has adversely affected the sale of Sambalpuri saris, dress materials and other handloom products at Sambalpuri Bastralaya Handloom Co-operative Society outlets. Consequently, weavers are bearing the brunt.
The Co-operative Society has 40 outlets across the country and sale of the hand-woven sari and dress materials have gone down at all the outlets since the high denomination notes were demonetised.
"November, December and January are considered peak time for the sale of sari, dress materials, dhoti, bed cover and other products at the outlets. However, they have been witnessing around 50 per cent drop in the sales over the past few days," said marketing officer of the society Hemanata Kumar Mishra.
"Since people have less cash in their hands. Nobody wants to spend the few Rs 100 notes they have to buy saris," said Mishra.
Around 6,000 weavers work directly for Sambalpuri Bastralaya. Also, at least 90 societies of the state<> are engaged in marketing of the products. Sambalpuri Bastralaya does business of around Rs 50 crore every year. Mishra also said they were facing problems in paying wages to the weavers. He said: "Our daily expenditure is around Rs 5 lakh. We pay the weavers daily wages in cash. But since we do not have sufficient Rs 100 notes, we have not been able to pay them wages during the past few days. We have now decided to transfer the wages online on Monday."
The scrapping of the notes has also affected weavers who sell their products directly in the market. "Farmers are the main customers of our products. But they don't have enough cash in their hands and this has affected the sale of the hand-woven sari and dress materials," said Sambhu Meher, a weaver of Chichinda village in Bargarh district.
"Also, we are unable to buy enough yarn because we do not have enough Rs 100 notes," he said.
Master craftsman of the village Harishankar Meher said: "Weavers do good business during the wedding season. But though this is that time of the year, the sale of handloom products has dipped following the demonetisation."
