Pune: Shops in Peth areas to reopen from June 15

All shops located in the central city (peth) areas will reopen from June 15. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has assured the Federation of Trade Association of Pune (FTAP) office bearers on Wednesday that it will create a list of micro-cluster zones and shops only in these zones will be closed while others will be allowed to reopen.

The FTAP and PMC officials had a meeting on Wednesday regarding the pending decision of opening up all shops in peth areas. These shops were closed for the past 85 days since the nationwide lockdown was imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Areas like Bhavani Peth, Nana Peth, Raviwar Peth, Ganesh Peth are known as wholesale marketplaces of the city. Supplies to the entire Pune city, Pimpri-Chinchwad and western Maharashtra are made from these marketplaces located in the heart of Pune city. With the 78 days closure of these markets, the entire supply chain has been disrupted and traders are in distress. Trade associations have repeatedly asked for reopening of these shops so that livelihoods of these traders are not affected. On this background, the FTAP and PMC officials had a meeting two days before and scheduled an on-site visit and another meeting for deciding in this regard.

Accordingly, Special Officer and Sugar Commissioner of the state Saurabh Rao visited the marketplace areas on Tuesday morning. According to the central government rules, once an area is declared as a containment zone it cannot be changed for at least 14 days. So Rao appealed to the traders to keep their shops shut for another 5 days.

Rao said, "The civic administration will review the situation in these zones and define new micro-containment zones. Another meeting will take place between FTAP and PMC officials on June 15 and about 90 per cent of shops outside the newly defined containment zones will be allowed to reopen."

The FTAP delegation agreed to the proposal of Mr Rao and decided to cooperate. FTAP members said, "If the PMC defers its decision, the FTAP will not meet any civic official regarding this and PMC officials will be responsible for whatever problems arise later."

Joint Commissioner of Police Rajendra Shisave, Additional Municipal Commissioner Shantanu Goyal, Additional Commissioner Sanjay Shinde along with FTAP President Fattechand Ranka, Mahendra Pitaliya, Ratan Kirad, Manoj Sarda, Jayant Shete, Arvind Kothari, Vipul Ashtekar, Sharad Sarda, Mohan Patel, Nitin Kakade, Nitin Porwal, Yashaswi Patel, Rishi Khandelwal, Mithalal Jain, Suresh Jethwani, Rajendra Joshi, Bobby Maini, Sohan Oswal, Pritam Bafna, Raju Oswal and others were present for the meeting.