Himachal Pradesh Handicrafts and Handlooms Corporation would patent its products for their genuineness and quality in order to win the trust of the consumers and create goodwill in the market for the state products, said Prem Kumar Dhumal, the Chief Minister while presiding over the 140th Meeting of Board of Directors of Himachal Pradesh Handicraft and Handloom Corporation and 129th Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Himachal Pradesh Khadi and Village Industries Board.
He further said that hand made and hand woven products were gaining popularity with the people who have developed taste for quality hand made products and were prepared to part with any amount of money to buy such products. He urged the Corporation to target such customers and make their choicest products available through their retail outlets while emphasizing on the need to upgrade the marketing system and adopt modern technologies for exploring wider marketing horizons for its products. He also advised the management to study the report of the students from London over the patenting of the Kullu shawls, who were recently on visit to the state to carry research over the Kullu shawl industry.
He said that efforts needed to be made to revive the old artifacts of the state, which were at the verge of extinction. He said that the Central sponsored Pradhan Mantri Rozgar Srijan Programme needed to be implemented in letter and spirit so that people residing in rural areas were benefited. He directed the authorities to expedite recovery of the loans advanced by it for various self employment activities as also evolve a system to strengthen the income generation of the organization so that beside generating employment to rural masses it was self sufficient in all respects. Board decided to grand 10 percent rebate to the employee’s up to the purchase of 5000 in a year over all the khadi products.
