Kharsawa (Jharkhand), Oct. 15 : Jharkhand’s Singhbhum District, which till recently produced cocoons for silk weavers in Bhagalpur area, has also started producing Tussar silk.

The experimental silk unit set up at Kharsawa Block in north Singhbhum District have proved to be a success.

The District administration of the Singhbhum has identified and allocated the tasks of production of silk. One is for the urban regions and the other in rural areas.

It rural areas, the tribal women were given initially trained in making silk from cocoons and spinning and weaving the silk fabric. In the urban areas, women were trained to do the embroidery work on woven fabric.

"Earlier, we did not do anything substantial and our activities were limited. Then we came here and did our training from January 22. After three months of training now we are producing silk. We make 20-27 spools of silk threads in a day. It takes almost one week to prepare a saree," said Katma Murmu, a trained weaver of handloom silk.

The tribal women first make the threads and then through looms they make the silk cloth.

It takes almost three days to finish a 10-metre silk cloth. Each of the women manage to weave about 10 silk sarees in a month.

Once the sarees are ready, they are sent to the towns where another group of women from the socially and economically weaker class, carry out the appliqué work and other artistic hand-crafted designs on these saris.

When the saris are ready, they are sent to Jharcraft, Government of Jharkhand''s Emporium in Ranchi.

"The locals as well as the Government desire that we must produce the products locally in an indigenous way. By this, employment opportunities are also getting generated to benefit people of the soil," said Bimal Ghosh, Secretary of Kharsawa Vikas Samiti.

Depending upon their output, these rural women earn between rupees 1,500 to 3,000 a month while the women involved in it in the town earn around rupees 2,200 to 3,000.

These sarees sell for rupees 3,000 to 3,500 per piece in the showrooms.

"We are here giving training to produce cocoon and in Kharsawa, and the training has been organised by NIFT for spinning and weaving of Tussar silk. This zone has been declared as silk zone and we are going to produce silk here from now onwards," said Vishwanath Paswan, Manager, Tussar Silk unit, Kharsawa.

India is the second largest producer and consumer of silk products in the world.

It is worthwhile to mention that India''s silk export has risen from rupees 2,359 crores in 2001-02 to rupees 3,338 crores during 2006-07 and denote a growth of 8.3 percent over a period of half a decade. (ANI)