NORTH LAKHIMPUR, May 16 - A day-long workshop was organised by the Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH) in association with Women Development Centre, at Mori Dirgha, under Kadam Revenue Circle, Lakhimpur on Monday. The workshop was aimed at providing training on modern designing.
At the beginning of the workshop, Bhagyavati Bhuyan of Women Development Centre explained the objectives of the workshop. Bhuyan explained that clusters of artisans would be formed with proper guidance from the EPCH. She said that after formation of a cluster it would be linked with designers, entrepreneurs and exporters.
The associates would place the prototypes developed during the training in the marketing events. Based on the buyers� response, the products would be developed in the cluster. Designers, entrepreneurs and exporters associated with the clusters would act as coordinators who would communicate and negotiate with the buyers.
The trained artisans would be provided Skill Grade Cards where the rates would be mentioned based on their skill levels. The cards could also be used as a mode to identify the beneficiary for different state and Central Government schemes for skill developments, loans for start-ups.
The workshop would help the master to identify and hire artisans as per their requirement. The artisans would also get a minimum bench mark wages for his or her skill sets, said Bhuyan during deliberations.
Participating in the workshop, Bhaskar Borah of EPCH appealed to the artisans to apply modern design in order to compete with the international market. He also stressed the importance of using organic dyes. He added that the cards issued to the artisans would help in identifying the potentiality of skilled artisans who could be further encouraged by facilitating the loans to set up their individual production units. Leading textile designer Dhrubajyoti interacted with the participants on various designs.
