Governance
Textile Committee
- 22 May 2020
- 2 min read
Why in News
Textiles Committee, Mumbai will now test and certify the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) body coveralls required for healthcare workers and other Covid-19 warriors.
- Personal protective equipment (PPE) refers to protective clothing, helmets, gloves, face shields, goggles, facemasks and/or respirators or other equipment designed to protect the wearer from injury or the spread of infection or illness.
Key Points
- Textiles Committee is the ninth approved laboratory to test and certify body coveralls.
- The national accreditation body, National Accreditation Board for Testing & Calibration Laboratories (NABL) has approved the lab facility under the textile committee.
- The Textiles Committee has come up with fully indigenously designed (Make in India) PPE Testing Equipment, i.e. Synthetic Blood Penetration Testing equipment, required for determination of the resistance of protective clothing materials to penetration by blood and body fluids.
- Benefits:
- This will help in overcoming the challenges of non-availability of reputed domestic manufacturers of PPE testing equipment. Further, there is a delay/long gestation period to import machines from China.
- This would also help in making India the world’s second largest manufacturer of body coveralls, next only to China.
- Textiles Committee:
- The Textiles Committee is a statutory body established in 1963 through an Act of Parliament and is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Textiles.
- It has been formed to ensure the quality of textiles and textile machinery both for internal consumption and export purpose.
- It is tasked with the functions of establishing laboratories for the testing of textiles and textile machinery. It provides for their inspection and examination.
- The Chairman of the Committee is nominated by the Government.
