With Hallmark being made mandatory from January next year, jewellers in Gujarat have demanded a cut in fee for obtaining licence.

Shantibhai Patel, president, Gems and Jewellery Trade Council of India, said jewellers in small towns have to pay Rs 10,000 for three years as licence fee, while in major cities this fee Rs 20,000 at present. The jewellers cannot afford to pay such a big amount. "Our demand is to reduce it to Rs 5,000 for small town jewellers and Rs 10,000 for jewellers in major cities like Ahmedabad. Earlier, licence fee was Rs 30,000.

The association has also called for an increase in number of Hallmark testing centers to cater to the needs of traders in the state, especially those in rural and semi-urban areas.Around 500 jewellers across the state have obtained hallmark licences, while there are only five testing centers - two in Ahmedabad and one each in Vadodara, Rajkot and Surat. "We need more testing centers to effectively implement hallmark system in the state. Five testing centres are not sufficient to meet the demand of several jewellers," said Shantibhai Patel.

While terming the Central Government's decision to make hallmarking mandatory as a welcoming move, he said the association has written a letter to consumer ministry and Bureau of Indian Standards demanding more testing centers for Gujarat.

The reason for demanding more centres is that jewellers in small towns and rural areas have to come either to Ahmedabad or other big cities where testing centers are available. The process is time consuming and it takes more than three days to get their products tested for obtaining hallmark. Further, it leads to increase in the cost of jewellery products as jewellers in these areas cannot afford frequent visits to testing centers.

"We require at least 15 testing centers in the state," Shantibhai Patel said.

All over the country 3,000 licences have been issued and 41 testing centres have been made operational. However, the country requires at least 200 centres and more than 25,000 licence holders for effective penetration of Hallmarking system in rural and semi-urban areas.

Shantibhai even said in order to ensure wider penetration of Hallmark system, individual customer should also be allowed to get their jewellery tested for Hallmark. At present, only jewellers are allowed for that. If BIS allows individual customers, it will bring in more transparency and also reduce the burden of jewellers.

He also suggested that many jewellery manufacturing units provide products to retail jewellers and retailers have to obtain Hallmark certificate when they sell the products. In such circumstances, Government should permit setting up of private testing centres by these units on the lines of testing centres of corporate jewellery companies.