In a tie up with the Refugee Handicraft Managing Committee of Bengal, the state is beginning to commercially manufacture footballs. Headed by ex-footballers Manas Bhattacharya, Bidesh Bose and Prasanta Banerjee, the project has taken off with trial productions.
Working out of a village called Bhimpur in Tarakeswar of Hooghly District, the Refugee Handicraft Managing Committee is constant training villagers mostly women to make footballs. 41 labourers have already been trained and another set of 55 are undergoing the same.
From the first batch of 41 trained labourers, 200 size-five footballs have already been manufactured. 20 odd-balls from the project’s first produce had been sent for testing at a private laboratory in Jalandhar. 19 out of the lot have successfully passed the quality test. The balls have also been locally circulated in some of the local football coaching classes.
“We want to make the state self-sufficient. Presently Punjab meets the annual demand of about one lakh footballs annually,” said Manas Bhattacharya, Chairman at the Refugee Handicraft Managing Committee.
“We want our home clubs of Mohunbagan and east Bengal to play with the balls the state produces two years down the line. This way we can revive the industry of football manufacturing that died out in the 1970s” he added.
The project would soon be christened by Mamata Banerjee herself. Alongside naming the initiative, the Chief Minister would also be naming the footballs manufactured in the facility.
The project is designed in a way that the labourers would be able to make the balls sitting at their home which would be collected by the authorities and sent for quality check.
“We are sending a kit to the trained labourers that come complete with bladders, threads, needles, adhesive, punching machines and everything else that is required so that the women especially can work from their homes itself,” Bhattacharya said.
The trained labourers are producing two balls every day and working for approximately 25 days a month.
According to Bhattacharya , “In the next four months we have plans to have 80 trained labours on board and going at the rate at which the present labours are working we would be able to produce 4000 footballs in a month.”
The Refugee Handicraft Managing Committee is closely working with Rajiva Sinha, the MSME secretary and is in talks with him to launch the footballs manufactured in the open market soon after the committee comes up with the pricing of the balls.
“The balls our Mohunbagan and East Bengal players use, cost anywhere between Rs 1500 and Rs 2000. In the next two years we are planning to come up with similar products,” said Bhattacharya.
Source: The Economic Times
Image Courtesy: The Economic Times