Chennai The Tamil Nadu government announced on Friday a R127.40-crore interest-free loan to 15 common effluent treatment plants (CETPs) situated at Tirupur to enable 700-odd dyeing units to attain zero liquid discharge (ZLD). The dyeing units were forced to shut down by the Madras High Court in January owing to non-compliance of its earlier order in attaining ZLD. The announcement was made by chief minister J Jalayalithaa and as part of her earlier offer of R200-crore interest-free loan to CETPs for achieving ZLD either by using Brain technology of Tamil Nadu Water Investment Corporation or the nano technology used by dyeing units inSurat, Gujarat. Most of the 700-odd dyeing units depend on CETPs that were set up a few years ago but have been found to be ineffective in attaining ZLD. The Madras High Court intervened on a petition filed by the farmers of Noyyal River Anicut and NGOs against the continuous pollution of Noyyal river by these dyeing units. Tirupur Exporters' Association president A Sakthivel said, “We welcome the TN government's allocation of interest-free loan to the CETPs as promised by the chief minister. We hope it not only speed up the process to attain ZLD by these units but also enable to open their shops at the earliest to meet the knitwear industry's demand for raw materials.” “Due to the closure of dyeing units for nearly 10 months, coupled with declining demand from the European countries as well as the US, we expect the exports to take at least 20% to 25% hit in the current fiscal as against last financial year’s business of R12,500 crore. Even the domestic business also will take a hit as number of garment units depend on local dyeing units for their business,” he added. According to him, the industry saw some activity over the last few months as 200 dyeing units started functioning at lower capacity following the successful ZLD implementation by a few individual ETPs.