DUMPING of imports woven cloth-like Terengganu songket, it is feared will not scratch the product which is a symbol of our pride. Technological advances also caused a lot of songket generated by machines. Compared to the pattern, it almost resembles local songket and distinguishes only the price, the local songket sold between RM300 to RM1000 while the imported songket is sold at a very low price between RM100 and RM150.

Songket operators, Mazita Mat Din, 50 from Belukar Jambu village, said the songket imports were even beautiful, but in terms of quality and quality could not match the local songket. “Patterns and motives may be similar to imported songket. But for those who are familiar with local products, it is possible to distinguish which original songket “.

Songket import is harder than local that softer and smooth. Songket Terengganu is woven from silk and cotton yarn combined with gold or silver yarn to produce certain patterns such as sowing flowers, full flowers, patterned flowers and more. According to Mazita, Terengganu songket has its own quality and identity according to plant motifs such as bamboo shoots, hibiscus, lotus flowers, mangosteen soybeans and more as per customer’s request. The price of songket becomes expensive because it takes a long time to complete it and the process is also complicated.

In addition, Mazidah also shared tips to identify the difference between the original songket and the import, which is to refer to the ultimate songket. For original weaving songket, it usually leaves the thread description while the songket machine does not have a thread description and looks neat.

Source: Sinar Harian, Saturday, 15 March 2013
Source: Terengganu News TV