Myki, the three-layer mask-making machine in Nagaland

Our Correspondent
Kohima, July 14 (EMN): Myki, a transformative livelihood intervention (TLI) project initiated and facilitated by the Women Resource Development department, government of Nagaland, has been producing three-layer masks since the second month of the nationwide lockdown and making it available to the public at a reasonable rate.

Vilone Sakhrie, the additional director for Women Resource Development, in a conversation with Eastern Mirror, said that when the lockdown was announced, there ‘was lots of panic even in our state and everything like sanitisers and masks were sold out’.

On “seeing the condition of the state and realising that mask production is something that we can do under our programme of TLI project,” they have been mass-producing three-layer masks and making it available to the public at reasonable prices and have also been donating to frontline workers and other organisations.

“We are not a business institute, but we are a government department and we want to serve the people in whatever way we can,” he stated.

Sakhrie said that they have few tailors in their project as well as in their training centres, and “we have some good passed out students from our centres who are located nearby and we are engaging them in our production”.

He informed that in order to maintain social distancing, the tailors who were initially trained to stitch masks, would come and take the raw materials and then stitch at home, and then bring it to the department for final touches.

The masks come in three sizes: small (INR 40), medium (INR 50) and large (INR 60). Sakhrie informed that they have two or three outlets in Kohima to whom they provide the masks at discount. ‘We make sure that they do not sell it above the retail price we have fixed,’ he said.

“And besides this marketing thing, what we are actually prioritising is to give support to those frontline workers, especially medical workers and various organisations,” he stated.

He also shared that at the moment, they do not have sufficient tailors and therefore are looking for more tailors and cutters to increase the output and produce as much as possible.

The department is said to have been training around 65 students in a year in various works like tailoring, knitting and weaving.

He further mentioned that the tailors do not specifically have to be women but “as far as possible, we want to engage women because we want to provide alternate source of livelihoods during this period as there are many who cannot go out and do normal (sic) works in this situation”.

He also reminded that Myki translates to “my home” which means a home for women where livelihood activities can be taken up. They have also decided to use it as the product label name to cover all the goods being made by whoever is associated with the department.

He informed that the TLI project was started in 2006 to empower women socio-economically.