Meerut bullion traders to verify artisans’ credentials before giving them gold

According to Meerut Bullion Traders Association’s general secretary, artisans in Meerut are given raw gold for manufacturing ornaments and have been caught running away with the gold

A joint team of Meerut Bullion Traders Association (MBTA) and Meerut Bengali Swarnkar Welfare Association (MBSWA) will launch a massive drive for verification of Bengali artisans to check growing incidents of workers running away with gold.

The MBTA and MBSWA took this decision in a joint meeting and agreed to begin this verification drive in the next two weeks.

It was decided to verify details of all artisans, including their names, local address, permanent address, name and addresses of their relatives, mobile numbers and police stations and also to get their character verification done through police.

General secretary of MBTA, Vijay Anand Agarwal, shared that the market had over 30,000 Bengali artisans who were experts in making jewellery from raw gold and had been working here since decades. He said that more than 5,000 units of jewellers were operational in the district. These artisans collect raw gold from the jewellers and manufacture ornaments at home. The entire business is based on mutual trust. However, a few artisans had disappeared with the gold and it became very difficult to recover it.

A jeweller, Sanjay Verma, recently lodged a complaint in T P Nagar police station, accusing artisans of disappearing with 400 grams gold given to them for making jewellery. Another jeweller Archit Jain lodged a complaint against his helper who disappeared with his gold on the way to Meerut from Delhi.

Anand said that such incidents had increased in past few years which compelled them to put in place a mechanism to thwart such thefts.

MBSWA’s president Sheikh Dilawar Hussain appealed to bullion traders to not give gold to any artisan without seeking guarantee of the association. MBSWA’s Manoj Mandal said that out of sheer competition, jewellers gave gold to those artisans who charged less, without checking their credentials.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times