Venkat & Savita Kumari
Port Blair, Jul 11: Mrs. M. Pappi Naidu Pradhan of Gram Panchayat, Hut Bay, Little Andaman has urged for removing of Containment and allow permission to open all types of shops and services.
In a letter addressed to the Lt. Governor of A&N Islands, Mrs. Naidu pointed out about the miserable condition of the general public of Little Andaman due to outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.
She said that the people of Hut Bay are poor and most of them are meager earners and majority of the people are daily wagers such as fishermen, fish vendor, street vendors, small tea/pan shops, person working in trading merchant shops, house maids, auto rickshaws, van drivers, cleaners, truck labourers and others have been managing their livelihood somehow or other by paying their house rent, conveyance charges, buying ration items, electric and water charges besides educating their children from the meager wages that they were getting.
The Pradhan further pointed out that due to the ongoing Lockdown imposed by A&N Administration under National Disaster Management Act 2005 in our island, these people who do not have any savings in their hands are literally facing financial hardships beyond explanations as they are not in a position to buy monthly ration items and to fulfill their other basic needs. The A&N Administration has been extended the lockdown to save the general public from COVID-19 and for eradicating it, but such a situation has arisen, that those people who are already suffering from various hardships to purchase their essential ration items are now fighting for their survival due to financial crises faced by them due to lockdown.
Thus she urged consider the severity of the second wave of COVID-19, and the circumstance explained above and to save the cut off islanders from starvation and mental depression and requested to abolished the containment and allow permission to open all the shops as per the SOP made for Port Blair as this district also falls in South Andaman.
