An unsettling experience that taught us to find a way

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, July 26

City residents underwent an unsettling experience during the national lockdown and the curfew imposed by the Central and state governments, respectively, to contain the spread of Covid-19 pandemic.

Activities across all sectors, including leading ones such as tourism, industries, retail sector, milk production, educational institutes, sports, and others, came to a grinding halt. In its aftermath, an unprecedented impact was visible as thousands of people lost their jobs, migrants went back to their native places among other things.

Business

Barring grocery and medicine stores, all other categories of retail suffered huge losses on account of the curb on movement. Material at shops damaged due to shutters being closed for so long. Industrialists, wholesalers and dealers complained of people holding back payments of those products, which were sold before the lockdown.

City leads in manufacturing warp knitting fabric, shawls, suiting-shirting, nut-bolt and packaging machines. All these trades suffer on account of the lockdown.

Educational institutes

A large number of educational institutes, whether government, private or religious societies run, are available in the city. These institutes such as the Guru Nanak Dev University, Government Medical College, Indian Institute of Management, SGPC run Sri Guru Ram Das Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Khalsa College and many more catapulted the city as a leading educational hub in the region. All of these along with hundreds of schools and scores of colleges switched over to online medium of instruction.

Transport

Ride-hailing services such as diesel and battery-run autos, cycle rickshaws, remained off-roads all those months during the lockdown. Migrants were left dependent upon the langar. BRTS, the only mass public transport service, remained locked.

Sports

Sportspersons could not carry out their routine exercises. They complained of losing valuable time in their sporting career and had to be satisfied with exercises at their houses. Swimming pool, badminton hall, gymnasium and wrestling stadium inside the Gol Bagh, Guru Nanak Stadium for hockey and athletic players besides Gandhi Ground for cricket and badminton hall remained out of bounds for players.

Langar

Feeding a large number of daily wagers, who were rendered unemployed with the introduction of the lockdown became a challenging task. However, it was soon over come by religious institutions and spirited residents. The SGPC arranged distribution of the langar in different parts of the city.

Tourism

After the opening of the economy in the ’90s, tourism gradually became the mainstay of business here, taking over from the textile and woollen industry. Over the past two decades, a large number of hotels, including luxury properties were added in its skyline. Since most of the hotels were closed, so a majority of its employees were laid off. This was done to cut the costs and the sales had plummuted while the expenditure did not come down proportionally. Only those staff members were retained, who were essential to maintain the properties.

This also happened with the tour and travel business, which also received a severe jolt. The city serves as a base for tourists coming from remote parts of the country including southern, eastern and western states, who wish to travel ahead to mountainous states of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. So, taxi and bus operators and their staff remained out of jobs. Their grouse is that a majority of people are reluctant to travel and half of the hotels in the city are lying closed. Similarly, taxi operators were not finding work as people are avoiding non-essential travel.

War against Covid-19 still on: Himanshu Aggarwal, ADC

This was a unique experience of enforcing a massive closure on all kinds of services. The scope in the pandemic closure kept changing. Firstly, it was to distribute food, then on migrants, gradually entire focus shifted on patients, reducing mortality, handling people coming from outer states, their sampling. Then focus shifted on the vulnerable, tracing primary and secondary contacts, providing essential gears such as PPE and other amenities to corona warriors, handling pilgrims returning from Nanded. Every day, we face a new challenge and the war against Covid-19 is still on. In all these, the cooperation of the public was supreme.

Fab coordination between depts: SS Gill, Commissioner

The lockdown was unprecedented and the cops carried out various jobs. Inter-departmental coordination between different government departments was fabulous. The police not only ensured the implementation of Covid-19 norms to restrict the spread of the pandemic, but also cooperated with the Health Department in quarantine and isolation of positive patients.