Panaji: Fearing that the COVID crisis in the state is spiralling out of control, the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Thursday called for a total lockdown for at least 15 days.
The GCCI said that as the oldest industry association in the state it favours the extreme measure of total lockdown to arrest the increasing number of positive cases and fatalities and give much required breather to the healthcare system and health workers. The industry body has however asked for industrial units to be exempted from the lockdown, specifically pharma, food processing, agro-based and continuous process industries.
The units supplying ancillaries and raw material to the abovementioned industries must also be exempted from the lockdown, said the GCCI. Reckoning that the state government during the second wave of COVID is concentrating more on the economic revival rather than survival of the citizens, GCCI president Manoj Caculo in a letter to Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said that village panchayats and municipalities are more aware of the local conditions and therefore are declaring their own lockdowns which is in contrast to the partial lockdowns imposed by district administrations.
βIt appears that measures like partial lockdowns are not showing the desired results, and therefore a total and strict lockdown is recommended, β Caculo said.
According to the GCCI, the rapid spread of the coronavirus has put the entire health infrastructure in the state under tremendous pressure and there are fears of the health infrastructure breaking down, if corrective measures are not adopted soon.
The GCCI had called for lockdown in Panaji, asking for voluntary closure of all non-essential shops and establishments in the capital city.
The industry body maintained that world experience shows that the best way to control the pandemic is total lockdown so that the virus transmission chain is broken. It is believed that it was the total lockdown in 2020 β from March 22 till May 4 β helped the country in controlling the virus from spreading.
The GCCI memorandum to the government includes a framework for planned lockdown, for instance COVID protocol for exempted industries, mobile vaccination units in industrial estates, COVID care centres in industrial estates which provide beds with oxygen facilities.