Hyderabad: Lockdown blues still haunt small traders

Hyderabad: Small traders in the city are yet to come out of their misery caused coronavirus and subsequent lockdown which continues to hit their business hard, while the financial support promised to them is still at large.

Traders say the clouds of despair are still looming large over the business. "More painful is that there is no ray of hope emerged out of the situation, so far. We are running short of resources to pay the salaries to the employees while rebuilding the business has become a distant dream. We can't go to banks for help to revive the business as it would only add to our woes," bemoaned Muneer Ahmed, owner of a wholesale Kirana shop at Mir Alam Mandi.

"Earlier we used to do business of Rs 15,000 to 20,000 a day, but now we are running the losses as we aren't able to to earn more than Rs 400 to 700 a day.

The fear of corona virus completely took away the business from our hand as people scare to enter Lad Bazar to purchase cloths and apparels," informed Tahir Affari, owner of a matching centre and zari works in the market.

Amidst the grief and plight of the traders, what is palpably missing is the awareness about Guarantee Emergency Credit Line (GECL) Scheme introduced by the central government to help the distressed MSMEs. A majority of the traders have not even heard about government the scheme.

"We have established business by our own having aware of the fact that banks here will not support us to do the same without going through the red tape policy and the crux full documentation process. Traders will exhaust till the banks approves the loan. As far as the MSMEs are concern, most of the traders here have never heard anything about the same," Claimed T Raju, who used to run laithe machine centre at Bahadurpura.

"Whatever we are earning right now is not enough to pay the rents and salaries of labours. A business that once helped us to earn adequately is now completely ravaged," claimed Mohd. Irfan, who used to run centering work at Balapur, Hyderabad.