Newskarnataka-Mangalore
Mangalore: The Coir Board held an exhibition on wheels, so that they could promote coir products and give a prop up to its various artifacts and merchandize to the market. An exhibition named “Coir Kranthi Express” was conducted to initiate the same, on Tuesday November 12.
District in-charge minister Ramanath Rai flagged off the coir expo bus from Town Hall which would travel around all the residential areas in the city before entering Udupi via Suratkal.
In his presidential address Minister Ramanath Rai said, “The by-products of coconut should be used by preparing various useful products and promoting it to the public. I am sure the bus by going to various place will create awareness among people about the uses of coir.”
“Coir Kranthi Express is an initiative by Coir Board to popularize coir and coir products among people. Coir is eco-friendly and various useful products can be manufactured from it. The country’s coir item exports come up to Rs 1,200 crore”, said T M Shahid, member of Coir Board.
“The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) organize various pro-people activities, such as training for around 120 youth from every district to set up units moreover we provide grants to people who wish to set up coir units”, he added.
T M Shahid also said, “Coir can be very useful – in Kerala more than 150 km of road has been laid using coir and so also the runway at Calicut airport.”
“It was learnt that in Karnataka, most of them open coir units in order to avail subsidy and later they close down although efforts are being made to open a sub-regional coir board office and a coir store in the city”, he added.
The express bus which had started its journey from Kanyakumari on October 5 is scheduled to reach New Delhi on November 25.
President Pranab Mukherjee, AICC president Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and others are expected to be present on the occasion.
The exhibition displayed coir items such as mats, frames, handbags, clothes, hats, umbrellas, paintings, jewellery, clothes, footwear and so on. The coir has zero percent
wastage and all the coir items displayed in the expo are natural. There are more than 100 coir items on display.
MP Nalin Kumar Kateel, KPCC secretary Ivan D’Souza, Shashidar Hegde, Badruddin, Ashraf, M S Mohammed, Kodijal Ibrahim were present for the exhibition.