The ministers were apprised about the Threat to Pashnina industry due to delays in clearances at customs and obtaining test reports of seized shawls. The wrong branding and identification of Pashmina shawls as shahtoosh shawls during inspection by the wildlife department using obsolete Scientific techniques is causing huge losses to the Pashmina industry and thus to our country's economy.
Currently the wildlife department sends the seized samples to their labs where basic optical microscopes are used to study the suspected guard hair found in the shawls. It was explained to the minister's that these guard hair belong to Pashmina goats and every hand made pashmina shawl has some guard hair present. Due to this process of seizure and subsequent hardships, many exporters have faced cancellation of orders and also their reputation has been damaged resulting in loss of future orders too.
The exporters also stressed on study of the warp and weft of a shawl at a Textile committee lab or any authorised textile lab to find the Contents of the shawl. Currently no such test is conducted and only the guard hair is tested which could even be a case of accidental contamination.
These procedures have caused a decline of 30% to 40 % in exports of hand made Pashmina since 4 to 5 years. These experiences have forced some of the exporters to either quit export of hand made shawls or choose cheaper machine made shawls to export. If this practice continues for some more years it will be devastating for the handmade Kashmir Pashmina industry which will eventually leave some 5 lakh artisans and thousands of traders out of work.
Both ministers heard the Grievance of the exporters and assured swift action on this matter by adopting latest techniques like using Scanning electron microscopes and DNA technology to identify guard hair of suspected shawls and not seize Pashnina shawls wrongly.
The delegation of exporters included Mr. Mubbashir Ahmed Shaw, Tariq Ahmed Dar, Imran Rashid Darzi , Bilal Ahmed Beigh, Naqeed Qazi and Abdul Manan Baba and many more.
The delegation is very thankful to the ministers for hearing their grievances and assuring full support to the exporters and resolving this issue at the earliest.
Dr. Hina Bhat has assured the exporters, her full support till this matter is resolved as this matter is of grave concern and will affect a large population of artisans in Kashmir valley.
