New privilege card for apparel sector employees

Leading consumer brands and retailers from the private as well as the public sectors came together recently to launch a programme focusing on employees’ welfare particularly for the apparel sector, an official media release said.

Initiated by the Joint Apparel Association Forum ( JAAF), this programme is to appreciate and reward the entire apparel industry workforce through a novel concept that will bring about economic relief and price advantage on a number of essential consumer goods and household commodities.

Titled “Ransalu Pranaama”, the programme offers a facility developed exclusively for the benefit of the employees in the apparel sector. “We have come up with this concept to recognise, motivate and appreciate their services rendered by them to the industry, which is today one of the foremost contributors to the national economy through exports,” Tuli Cooray, Secretary- General of JAAF said in the statement.

This programme has also been approved by the Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen.

Under this, each employee will be entitled to a Pranaama Privilege Card which they can produce at any of the partner merchant outlets and obtain the price advantage. The programme has so far enlisted the largest retail super market chain in the private sector – Cargills Food City, SLT and Mobitel.

Leading brands of consumer durables and household appliances such as Abans, Singer, DSI, Unilever, State Trading Corporation ( STC), Metropolitan, Ceylinco Insurance, Sampath Bank, Hutch, Ewis Peripherals, Hameedia, Anton Group signed agreements and offer understandings with the JAAF and CH17 recently, a further batch of consumer brands is due to be enlisted shortly.

“This Pranaama Card is unique in a sense that it is a Loyalty plus discount card,” programme developer and owner Jumar Preena, who is the Chief Executive of CH17 said in the statement issued by CH17.