Hyderabadis crowd markets, provisional stores ahead of lockdown

Shops witness long queues, with managements struggling to ensure physical distancing

Hyderabad: With the State government announcing the 10-day lockdown starting Wednesday, people in the city on Tuesday rushed to supermarkets, vegetable markets and other stores to buy provisions and essential commodities.

Although relaxations have been announced for four hours from 6 am to 10 am daily during the lockdown, people were seen thronging vegetable and provisional stores, fruit shops and other departmental stores to purchase stock for at least 10 days. This led to long queues, with shop managements struggling to ensure physical distancing.

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“To make sure that I don’t have to go to supermarkets and grocery store, again and again, I went for quick shopping today. I have stocked every item required just to ensure we don’t have to go out of our house during the lockdown,” said Ranjana Devi, a homemaker from Secunderabad.

Though medicines come under essential commodities, wholesale and retail medicines market in Sultan Bazaar too witnessed a rush resulting in traffic jams in the lanes.

“Every month, I buy medicines for my father from this wholesale market. Though there are enough medicines for this month, I did not want to take a chance,” said Praneeth Kumar, one of the customers at the Inderbagh market. Not just shops, some people also rushed to ATMs to withdraw cash fearing that machines may go dry.

For several people like M Ravi Kumar Naidu, a businessman, whose family is recuperating from Covid-19, the lockdown announcement came as a sudden surprise. “We cannot move out fearing re-infection. Although we have necessary essentials, we need a few provisions. We tried booking on online grocery apps, but most of them are already booked with no slots available,” Naidu said.

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