Team Herald
PANJIM: On Friday morning people who could not muster enough supplies before the lockdown, queued before retail and vegetable shops at Caranzalem and Taleigao. Some of these serpentine queues were as long as 50-100 metres and many tried to maintain a safe distance even though panic of short supply was evidently written on their faces.
“Government should immediately remove all hurdles for issuance of curfew permits to all distributors and wholesalers who are willing to service stores so that a reasonable supply chain is maintained for the citizens. Autocracy will lead to anarchy in the coming days and we are the victims of public wrath. On the other side, we received over 2,000 home delivery requests in a couple of hours when our permit went viral. It is depressing to us that we cannot serve those who matter the most to us, our customers. At our stores for instance, the crowd outside our store prevented home deliveries even to elderly and sick to go out of our store,” said Kirit Maganlal, Partner of Magsons to Herald.
General complaint heard was that the supply was stopped and some of the vegetable shopkeepers were hiking the price arbitrarily three to four times over the normal price. “It is open black marketing as the vendors are not getting fresh supply,” said a customer in a queue to procure vegetables. In fact, the shop was sold out soon and to control the rush, the police had to intervene and close down the shop. However, the chemist shops were the least visited as compared to vegetable vendors.
People were also seen walking down in the fields in Taleigaon to pluck vegetables directly from the plant. However, it was not clear whether the invaders paid the farmer or not.
