Shortage of workers hits food stalls operations at railway station

Ludhiana: Shortage of workers affected food stall owners who couldn’t function properly or deliver packed food items to local passengers who had reached there to catch the long-route trains.
The Railways have given permission to food stall owners for starting take-away packed food items from their retail counters after following all standard protocol. Apart from that, it has also been decided to reopen the pantry car service on for passenger trains crossing the city after issuing of the health advisory about implementation of safety norms while delivering packed food items to on-boarded passengers.
There are more than seven stalls and 20 trolleys which used to serve food items to thousand of rail commuters before the enforcement of lockdown in country. But after rail service was resumed, only one food stall owner operated on Monday as it had become difficult for most of them to re-open their food stalls as they had suffered huge losses in the past two months.
Kishori Lal, an owner of a food stall operating on the station premises, said, “The Railways have decided to not charge any rental for the past two months following the lockdown period as we didn’t operate food stalls and faced huge losses.”
“Only one food stall opened on Monday after the authorities requested them to reopen the vends for providing food items to passengers,” a stall owner said.
Sources in railway department said, “Food stall owners are not in a position to operate their food stalls as passengers are not in mood of even purchasing packed food items from them because of the sense of fear. But on other side, the higher authorities had assigned special duties to the local health department officials to run a special drive to check maintenance and cleanliness of food stalls and impose penalty on those found not adhering to norms.”
Senior divisional commercial manager of Ferozepur division Vivek Sharma said, “It’s not mandatory for food stall owner to reopen these as we have made it clear in the notification that it’s up to the owner of food stalls whether they feel save to operate or not.”
Apart from that, it has been made mandatory for all vendors to wear hairnets, masks, gloves (disposable, non-disposable) and aprons.