BIS appeals to jewellers to reconsider Monday’s strike

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has appealed to jewellers that they reconsider their call for strike on Monday over alleged glitches in the new hallmarking system.
The pace of hallmarking has gathered momentum with almost 10 million pieces of jewellery having been hallmarked since it became mandatory on June 16, BIS said, referring to jewellers’ complaints about the slow pace of the process.

Also, more than 91,000 jewellers are now registered with BIS, compared with just about 35,000 before hallmarking became mandatory, it said. Addressing a virtual press conference, BIS director-general Pramod Kumar Tiwari said: “Initially, in the first fortnight of hallmarking becoming mandatory, about 14.28 lakh (1.428 million) jewellery pieces were hallmarked. But subsequently, the pace of hallmarking picked up and already more than 1 crore (10 million) pieces of jewellery have been hallmarked. In fact, on August 20, the assaying and hallmarking centres in the country have hallmarked 3.9 lakh pieces of jewellery. Also, we are in constant dialogue with the jewellers, and therefore, the strike call is uncalled for.”

According to jewellers, annually almost 100-120 million pieces of jewellery are manufactured in India. In addition, existing stock of almost 60-70 million pieces are yet to be hallmarked. This takes the total count of pieces to be hallmarked this year to almost 160-180 million pieces. Current speed and capacity of hallmarking centres is about 200,000 pieces per day at which it would take 800-900 days, or 3-4 years, to mark the pieces, they have alleged.

There are 860 hallmarking centres. “Of these, only 161 assaying and hallmarking centres receive 500 pieces of jewellery daily for hallmarking. We have also decided to allow the hallmarking centres to run double shifts if this number increases further,” said Tiwari.