As floods hit Onam celebrations, TN traders face loss

Yet to recover from the unprecedented floods, the traders in Kerala have been cancelling orders placed with manufacturers in Tirupur, which is one of the major suppliers of dress materials for Kerala.

“More than 150 textile units have made dress materials for Onam. However, all the orders have been cancelled as people in Kerala are in no mood to celebrate,” said KS Babuji, general secretary of the South India Collar Shirts and Innerwear Small Scale Manufacturers Association (SISMA).

As the orders were placed months ago, the textile units had already manufactured the dress materials and were preparing to send them.

Manufactured garments can’t be sent now as vehicle movement remained suspended on the flood-ravaged roads and even if those goods were sent by trains, there wouldn’t be any sale. The Kerala government itself has decided to cancel offical Onam celebrations that it was to organise.

The textile traders in Tirupur claimed that as their produced goods could not be sold out, the business have come to a standstill and they couldn’t take fresh orders. With no returns from the already manufactured clothes, the textile units are left penniless to invest in new produces. However, Babuji said that the textile traders stand for the cause of Kerala and appealed to the central government to help in their speedy recovery. “We have made an appeal made on humanitarian ground. Also, if Kerala attains normalcy, it would in turn help us in reviving our business,” he added.

Apart from textile units, many other businesses have also taken a beating due to the unprecedented floods. “Egg supply from Namakkal district was affected for quite a few days, but things are slowly returning to normalcy,” said P Selvaraj, chairman of National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC), Namakkal zone. About 50 lakh eggs were sent to Kerala from Namakkal regularly.

Similarly, hundreds of tonnes of vegetables were sent to Kerala from Coimbatore markets during Onam, which too is suffering a huge loss for the unprecedented floods.