MSME&T dept to supply fabric for home guards, civil defence volunteers uniforms

Kolkata: The MSME and Textiles (MSME&T) department will hand over fabric for the uniform of civil defence volunteers and home guards across the state for the first time in this financial year.

The Home department recently gave the approval for supplying the fabric. The MSME&T department is hopeful of supplying the same in the next three months. As per estimates of the department, around 70,000 metre of cloth will be required for the recipients and the man-days generated will be around 10,000.

“We have been supplying school uniforms since November 2022 and also providing sarees for Anganwadi and the Asha workers, besides gowns for the doctors and patient dresses in state-run hospitals. We will now provide fabric for uniforms of civil defence volunteers and home guards.

The police will then prepare the uniforms using their own tailoring arrangements,” said a Nabanna official. Meanwhile, the first set of school uniforms is presently being distributed among the students and the state government expects to supply the second set in June after the summer holiday.

As per estimates by the Education department, nearly 1.10 crore students from class I to VIII will be receiving two sets of school uniforms each.

Total of 56,000 Self-Help-Groups, comprising 6-8 lakh women members, are involved in the work. In the last three years, since the school uniform distribution started, the state government has spent over Rs 1,000 crore for this exercise.

“The target for distributing the first set of school uniforms is by January- February in 2026 and the second set by March- April. Since the academic year starts from January, we can hand over uniforms to the students right at the beginning of the academic year,”

said the official.

The MSME&T department had launched ‘Powerloom Incentive Policy’ on December 30, 2021 for setting up shuttleless looms in the state. About 1,500 new-age power looms have been set up.

The total cloth requirement for school uniforms is around 5.5 crore metre and the bulk of this cloth earlier used to be imported from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. However, the state has now stopped import after attaining self-sufficiency.