Workers from the northern States, who were employed at the garment export units in Tiruppur and went home in the last six months due to slowdown in orders, are returning to work, said Kumar Duraiswamy, joint secretary of the Tiruppur Exporters Association.
According to provisional data available, between April and December 2023, garments worth $10 billion were exported from India and of it, $ 4.9 billion were knitwear exports. While 50 % of the knitwear exports are from Tiruppur, the rest are distributed between West Bengal, Bengaluru, and Delhi and nearby areas. When exports from Tiruppur slowed down, affecting wages and work days for the migrant workers, many of them started going to their home towns. Some of them took up jobs at the garment units in Delhi and nearby areas.
However, these workers kept in touch with the workers who continued in Tiruppur as the wages are higher here.
In the global market, the ports and warehouses of the buyers had huge inventory for more than a year after the COVID pandemic and the inventory started reducing during the last three months because of retail sales picking up, especially for the smaller retailers. Now, orders were picking up in Tiruppur and the situation was expected to revive fully in a couple of months. Hence, workers were returning to Tiruppur, he said.
One major challenge for Tiruppur continued to be import of garments at low prices from Bangladesh. Fabric made in China and other south east Asian countries were also flooding the Indian market, affecting the entire supply chain. The government should address this issue at the earliest, he said.