De-stalking and its impact on health of women de-stalkers of dry chilli pods in Guntur district

De-stalking is one of the problematic areas in chilli processing units. Generally, a women group is engaged in destalking daily 5-10 hours for 4 months in a year. Majority of the women at a time removed stalks more than 6 pods and destalked more than 6 kg per day. In this context, while de-stalking, the prickliness of the stalks creates injuries to the fingers. Majority of them expressed they got scars on fingers, pain in hands, itchiness in their fingers and also complained that facing difficulty in in eating food and attending to the daily household chores. For these problems, used some of their own ordinary protective measures like wrapping of old cloth and purikosa (jute rope) to their fingers, worn band aids, rubber bands, etc. to get rid of them. But the survey results indicated that they were not comfort with their ordinary gadgets. Hence, this survey was indicated that the emerging needs to be developed protective gadget for hands with comfort and low cost while de-stalking of chillies in the study area.