World | India
Pune women's group sets up polythene plant
A group of homemakers, maids, baby-sitters and vegetable vendors, some barely educated, got together to set up a Rs10 million (Dh781,045) polythene manufacturing plant here.
Pune: A group of homemakers, maids, baby-sitters and vegetable vendors, some barely educated, got together to set up a Rs10 million (Dh781,045) polythene manufacturing plant here.
The project - the first in Maharashtra in the women's cooperative sector - was inaugurated on Thursday and has already bagged an export order from Dubai to supply six million plastic bags annually, said an excited Sulabha Ubale, patron of the Swamini Self-Help Groups Federation (SSHGF).
"Shivajirao Patil [MP from Shirur] has also promised to get us orders for half a million bags per month from the sugar cooperatives," Ubale said.
The project to manufacture polythene bags, used mainly by the sugar and cement industries, had a humble beginning with each member of the self-help groups associated with SSHGF contributing Rs100 a month.
"We decided to do something that would provide gainful employment to our members. So we set up a sustainable business entity with long-term growth potential. Polythene bags are in great demand in this region," said Ubale, a Shiv Sena corporator in the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) on the outskirts of Pune.
Maharashtra has 10 polythene bag manufacturers in the private sector, but the Swamini self-help group's project is the first that will be exclusively managed by women.
The 156 women members of SSHGF managed to successfully raise Rs2 million.
Share this article
News Editor's choice
-
Hacked emails fuel global warming scepticism
UN top climate official says e-mails pilfered from a British university fuelled scepticism
-
Saudi scholars slam Swiss minaret ban
Swiss referendum to impose ban on construction of minarets criticised
-
Saudi woman allowed to drive despite ban
The woman had to take over from her husband after he collapsed suddenly

