Cases fall in city, now shops can remain open till 3pm

Ludhiana: With a dip in Covid-19 cases and positivity rate in Ludhiana for the past two weeks, deputy commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma on Wednesday extended operation timings of shops by two hours. Now, these can operate from 5am to 3pm; earlier the timing was from 5am to 1pm. Due to the early closing time, there was huge resentment among shopkeepers.
Speaking to city residents via Facebook, the DC said, “Ludhiana has been witnessing some respite for the past two weeks after the extraordinary scale of the second Covid wave hit the district in March-April. Cases and positivity rate have tapered off consistently due to which the decision of relaxation in the timings of shops has been taken, and now shops can remain open till 3pm. Besides this, now home delivery of food items would also be allowed till 9pm, which was earlier 8pm. We can prevent the third wave of Covid by strictly adhering to Covid-apt behaviour and getting the vaccination as soon as possible (sic).”
Welcoming the decision, Bhupinder Singh Basant, senior vice-chairman of Punjab Traders’ Board, said, “This will give a huge respite to shopkeepers, traders and food business owners. During the past one month, they have suffered massive losses. But everyone understands that the decision was taken for our own good and results are visible now with cases dropping to 500 from 1,500.”
Terming the development as their victory, Sunil Mehra, state general secretary of the Punjab Pradesh Beopar Mandal, said, “We have been protesting against early closing timing for the past three weeks. On Monday, we started protesting outside the houses of MLAs. Our demand was to allow shops to open till 5pm and on Wednesday we met the DC along with MLA Rakesh Pandey.”