Traders threaten stir as NMC issues notices for Covid test

Nagpur: Traders have threatened to take to the streets against Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s (NMC) threats to seal shops whose owners do not get themselves and their staff tested for Covid. NMC has started issuing notices to individual shops.
Dipen Agrawal, president of Chamber of Associations of Maharashtra Industry and Trade (CAMIT), said that NMC notices were illegal as so far no notification had been issued asking traders to get tested for Covid. “The notices mention verbal communication between traders’ representatives and the municipal commissioner. Since when has verbal communication become an official document,” he added.
“When NMC is not testing us for free how can it compel us to get tested by paying thousands of rupees? In any case private laboratories and hospitals do not have the capacity to test thousands of shopkeepers and their employees,” said Agrawal. He has asked his members not to get tested for Covid unless they have some symptoms.
Slamming municipal commissioner Tukaram Mundhe, Agrawal said that the officer was responsible for spurt in cases in Nagpur. “First he said that Nagpur would be Covid free by August 15. So people took it easy. Then he said that he would impose a fifteen-day lockdown so people rushed to the market to stock goods,” he added.
Ashwin Mehadia, president of Nag Vidarbha Chamber of Commerce (NVCC), also said that shopkeepers were not getting tested for Covid as NMC was not doing it for free.
Additional municipal commissioner Ram Joshi admitted that a written order had not been issued asking shopkeepers to get tested for Covid. “The market department has only issued notices to shopkeepers, who are NMC lessees,” he told TOI.
Mayor Sandip Joshi termed the notices as illegal. “When NMC has not issued a written order in this regard, then how can it issue notices to individual shopkeepers? Secondly, why does NMC want RT-PCR test only which costs Rs1,900 and not antigen, which costs Rs700 per person. This is nothing but a racket to benefit private laboratories and hospitals. I will meet traders on Monday evening and try to find a way out,” he told TOI.