With the Government allowing the reopening of malls and places of worship in Unlock 2, people commenced visiting these places after the gap of over 100 days. However, most of the worship places and malls were not open on the first day of Unlock 2 in Dehradun and those which were open had limited footfalls. While some malls resumed their business from Wednesday, other malls are slated to reopen from Thursday. A guard at a mall on Rajpur Road informed that the mall was sanitised on July 1 and it will reopen for the public from July 2.
Further, most of the places of worship like temples and Gurudwaras are also likely to open from July 2. "Most of the priests of the temples are also in dilemma about the reopening of temples for the public in the current pandemic.
Besides, the proper sanitisation of the temple is also important, so after cleaning and sterilising the temple, we will open the temples for people from Thursday," said the priest of a temple in Karnpur area.
Meanwhile, the malls which reopened on Wednesday installed sanitiser machines at the entrance and thermal screening of customers was also being done. However, these malls were missing the customer footfall in their stores and those who visited seemed reluctant to stay there for long. According to a Rajpur Road resident Neelima Bharadwaj, "I came to the mall as my children insisted they wanted to shop and we left as soon as we finished our shopping.
It is because several people arrive in the mall from different places and we do not know what can spread infection.
Though, there were hardly any customers when we were shopping but still, hanging out in the mall just for fun is not possible like before for at least the next two months." According to Sanju Sharma, a sales employee in a women’s wear store of a mall, the customers will take some time to get comfortable to shop in malls as most of them are still hesitant even to touch the dresses.