The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to continue the lockdown in the country, saying that the decision to extend it as a logical and extremely important step under present circumstances.
The traders’ body has assured Prime Minister that the traders under any circumstances will continue to run supply chain of essential goods in a most efficient and effective manner so that citizens of the Country may not face any difficulty in procuring essential commodities for their daily needs.
Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general of CAIT said that there are about 7 crore traders in the country, out of which about 1.5 crore traders deals in essential commodities, but only 40 lakh of them have been able to continue the supply chain of essential commodities across the country because of facing several difficulties in obtaining passes from the authorities and non availability of transport.
On the other hand nearly 80 per cent of employees of traders have migrated to their villages at the time of earlier locked down while only 20 percent of employees are working with traders for supply of essential goods, he said. Keeping in view of the extension of lockdown it is more necessary to enhance the numbers of shops considerably dealing in essential commodities so that people in general may not suffer in procuring their daily needs.
The CAIT has urged the Government to mechanise a uniform system across the country for smooth availability of curfew passed to the traders dealing in essential goods and their employees as also to ensure availability of sufficient mode of transport for movement of goods.