Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Mar 23 : While announcing that they will keep their establishments shut across the Valley till 31st of March, Kashmir Traders and Manufacturers Federation urged the people to follow lockdown and nothing that “social distancing” was key to breaking the chain of transmission.
Urging people to stay indoors, KTMF acting President Manzoor Ahmad Bhat said WHO has declared COVID-19 as pandemic and thus reiterated upon the authorities of J&K to scale up response to treat, detect and reduce transmission to save people’s lives. He said although administration here in Srinagar is doing a commendable job by restricting people at their respective homes but procurement of Life Support Ventilators should also be done on urgent basis as there is a dire shortage of it in our hospitals.
Bhat said we are equally concerned about daily wagers, labourers, hawkers, cart pullers who have been hit hard over the coronavirus crisis and appealed to the shopkeepers not to resort to hoarding and cut their profit by at least 50 percent on humanitarian basis in these testing times. “Crisis risen due to COVID-19 was causing terrible financial stress to the already ailing business community and poor people of Kashmir in particular”, Bhat said.
The statement issued by the KTMF said that their president Mohammad Yaseen Khan who also heads Kashmir Economic Alliance continues to be lodged at Agra Central Jail since August 5.