Coimbatore: The Coimbatore Tirupur Powerloom Unit Owners Association today sought the intervention of the District Collector to prevail upon the State Government to take steps to waive their loans taken from various banks, amounting to about Rs 60 crore.

In a memorandum to Collector TN Hariharan, the association said that about 300 of the nearly 3,500 units in the two districts had taken loans from different banks, based on the revised wages for their job works allotted by cloth merchants in 2014. However, majority of the managements stopped paying revised wages after a certain period of a maximum six months putting the unit owners into lot of hardship, association secretary M Balasubramanian said.

With increased maintenance cost of power looms and other production cost and also wages to be paid to workers, the owners were not able to repay the loans for which the bankers started exerting pressure, he said.

Though some units repaid the loans after selling looms and other accessories, some were struggling to meet both ends, Balasubramanian said.  Many of them shifted their wards from private schools and Government schools for want of money.

Considering their plight, the collector should take steps to prevail upon the State Government for loan waiver, he said. The government had told the unit owners its inability to waive the loans since it may become a precedent and other sectors would also demand such waivers in future.