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Mixed experienceAn officer of the Dot Sign print works in Mirpur, in a Business Standard report

Orders from 2 lakh pieces a month to 50,000, and staff moved onto contracts

The Dot Sign works held on to an Italian buyer through Covid, but its monthly order book fell from around 2 lakh pieces of cloth to 50,000 or less.

The Dot Sign works at Duaripara in Mirpur kept printing for an Italian company through Covid, so it never shut down. The scale of the fall is in its own figures: a monthly order book of about 2 lakh pieces of cloth dropped to 50,000 or fewer. With the work gone, part of the permanent workforce was moved onto day contracts - called in when there are orders, idle when there are none. Another screen printing firm in the same area lost about 70 per cent of its work and said it had seen nothing like it since starting up in 2017. The SME Foundation had declared a cluster of more than 500 screen printing firms in Mirpur back in 2013. The works survived because it held one direct foreign buyer, and the cost of that survival landed on the workers' pay.

Lessons

  1. 1.Holding one direct buyer can keep a works open through a collapse in orders
  2. 2.Moving permanent staff onto contracts cuts the cost, but the cut is taken out of their income

Published with the person's permission, without revealing who they are.

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