Ministry assistance for two shoe making villages

by Irangika Range

The Small and Rural Industries Ministry has launched a program to promote local micro, small and medium leather products and shoe manufacturers to increase value addition of leather products and shoes to suite the national and international market. This is part of the Guru Pehayen Ran Pehayata a national program to develop 1000 industrial villages in the country.

Under this development program, the Ministry has set up a new shoe manufacturing village at Vadhiri-Karavedi area in Jaffna investing Rs.4 million. It has also selected Paranawatte village in Malimbada to be developed as a shoe manufacturing village investing Rs.1.8 million.

The IDB will conduct a 14 day training program to provide technical knowledge to shoe manufacturers at the Paranawatte village. It will provide instructions to maintain modern machinery and equipment and to sustain high quality through training. It will also introduce low cost methods to arrest wastage at the production process and provide insights into new trends in the international market.

Minister K.D. Lal Kantha said that the IDB conducted the training program for 60 leather products and shoe manufacturers to promote their technical knowledge at the Vadhiri-Karavedi village.

It was very successful. This village manufactures leather products and shoes since 1914 and there was a big demand for its products in Sri Lanka. It also set up the shoe manufacturing co-operative society in 1955.

Now these manufacturers have various problems and their market is limited to the Jaffna and Vavuniya districts.

Therefore, the Ministry has decided to look in to them by providing infrastructure facilities to promote the industry.

Around 100 manufacturers are engaged in the industry now at the village," the Minister said.

He said that his target is to promote the local leather products and shoes to the international market to earn high foreign exchange to the country. The Ministry provides facilities to achieve this target to grab the international market.