Surat’s textile business has been hit by the domnetisation. The city’s power loom sector has already clocked losses amounting to Rs 800 crores. Production in the textile sector has halved. Earlier, there was production of four crore meters of cloth a day. Now production has fallen to two crore meters a day.

Surat is home to 50,000 power loom units, another 40,000 units for value addition and about 400 dyeing units. About 10 lakh workers are employed within the textile sector in Surat. The textile business in Surat has an annual turnover of nearly Rs 350 crores.

Workers are not paid salaries because of the limit on withdrawals. The cash crunch has forced textile and power loom units to shut at least three days in the week and do away with the night shift entirely.

The bulk of the workforce is with dyeing and printing units in textile processing houses, with the power loom sector, and with packaging and unloading in the trading sector. Most of the workers employed in this industry are migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.

Many workers do not show up because they are queuing up at banks or have gone back home with whatever savings they have. So, processing houses are running for only three or four days a week.