Quepem puts its foot down on total lockdown

Quepem: Quepem town will go into a complete lockdown amidst reluctance from the market association which acquiesced to keep the establishments closed.
The town has recorded four COVID positive cases, which has forced the Quepem municipal council to impose the lockdown in a bid to check the spread for the coronavirus.
The Quepem shops and entrepreneurs association submitted a memorandum to the council demanding that the lockdown be postponed or cancelled. The association pointed out that the decision was taken without taking its members into confidence.
Association spokesperson Azim Sheikh said the move on the five-day lockdown ruffled the feathers of the shopkeepers, prompting the association to submit the memorandum to the civic body.
Earlier, QMC members personally visited every shop, appealing to the vendors and traders to keep the shutters down for five days.
The civic body held an emergency meeting late Monday evening to iron out differences and persuade traders and shopkeepers to follow the lockdown.
QMC chairperson Dahesh Naik claimed that many traders had approached the council to consider a lockdown.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, association president John Fernandes expressed willingness to participate in the lockdown
“We are also stakeholders…we should have been taken into confidence before such a major step was decided upon,” Fernandes said.  
Naik insisted that the five-day lockdown is needed to check the spread of the virus in the town.
“The lockdown is needed as four members of a single family have tested positive for the coronavirus,” the QMC chief explained, cautioning that the virus could spread to other areas of Quepem taluka.  The QMC will sanitise not only the market but also ward numbers 1, 2 and 11 as a precautionary measure.
The civic body will hold another meeting with traders to work out a strategy to deal with post-lockdown scenario.