PONDA: After temples reopened after being closed for almost three and a half months, the number of visitors to these religious places of worship has been few and far between.
As a consequence, the various shops, flower vendors, fruit vendors around these temples have decided to shut their shops given the lack of business.
Many of them, say they are dependent on such trade activity for their livelihood, but with only a small number of devotees visiting the temples, there are no buyers for their goods. They however acknowledged that they at times, receive cash donations due to the COVID crisis. One of the vendors reasoned that the devotees are also suffering from a financial crunch and are thus not buying their goods the way they would do so, before the COVID pandemic.
Even rickshaws, taxis and motorcycle pilots have been affected by this and their business had anyways come to a standstill ever since the lockdown began. While the situation has not changed now, they pointed out that they would get good business in ferrying tourists to the temple, which has also stopped due to the lack of visitors.
