Hoshiarpur administration’s tall claims of home delivery fall flat

Sanjiv Kumar Bakshi

Hoshiarpur, March 25

Despite tall claims to make appropriate arrangements for delivering essential items and medicines on the doorstep, the district administration failed to provide the facility on Wednesday.

However, it issued a list of just 12 grocery shops with their contact details in the morning to provide the essential items to 16 lakh people in the district. Besides, the phone numbers of two medical stores were released for home delivery of medicines and these too for the city.

The list included seven shops from Hoshiarpur and one each from Tanda, Dasuya and Garhshankar and two from Mukerian.

The list was released in a hurry and without any preparation as a lot of residents faced difficulties in contacting these shops. Some of the residents could not contact the grocery shop owners, while who managed to talk to them did not get any item on the doorstep till the evening.

Grocery owners told callers that only items worth more than Rs500 would be supplied on the doorstep. Apart from this, some owners said they did not have curfew passes to deliver items on the doorsteps and they were waiting to get the same from the administration till afternoon.

In the afternoon, the administration told the grocery shop owners to contact two numbers, which were provided to them, so that they may be registered for the home delivery service.

The administration also roped in civil defence members and NGO volunteers for home delivery. But, residents could not get essential items throughout the day.

Till the filing of the report, a meeting of officials was going on at the district administrative complex to finalise the new list of grocery shop owners for the purpose. Coronavirus can be avoided by awareness: Principal Secretary

Principal Secretary reviews preparations in district

Principal Secretary Tourism and Culture Department Hussan Lal said: “The Punjab government is fully prepared to deal with every situation in the wake of Coronavirus, and there is no need to panic. The public should only follow the orders issued by the district administration from time to time.”

He was addressing a meeting of officials today to take stock of the arrangements being made in the district in view of the Corona threat. He directed the district administration to maintain supply chain management to the public.

He appealed to people to beware of rumours, saying that the Coronavirus can be avoided by awareness. He said concrete arrangements had been made by the state government to deal with this epidemic. He appealed to the shopkeepers, chemists and volunteers of the district and asked them to come forward with the district administration to help the people in this difficult time.

Deputy Commissioner Apneet Riyat and SSP Gaurav Garg was also present on the occasion.

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