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Social distancing goes for a toss in Jammu as tipplers rush to liquor shops
Social distancing went for a toss in Jammu on Wednesday when tipplers rushed to liquor shops
Social distancing went for a toss in Jammu on Wednesday when tipplers rushed to liquor shops.
Wine shops opened across Jammu on Wednesday after over a month-long closure owing to Covid-induced lockdown, drawing heavy rush of tipplers.
Consequently, the city witnessed traffic snarls outside such vends and the case in point was Gole Market, Gandhi Nagar where huge rush outside two liquor vends brought the traffic movement to standstill.
Though a few policemen were posted outside these vends and a traffic police van made announcements asking the tipplers not to park their vehicles on roads, their beeline kept swelling despite the rising mercury throughout the day.
Saner people, however, sulked and questioned the logic behind the 42-day lockdown across the UT. “It seems that all of a sudden Covid has disappeared. Where is the required social distancing and Covid-appropriate behaviour? People are so eager to purchase liquor and it doesn’t matter to them if the virus gets transmitted,” said an elderly man, who had come to an adjacent hardware store to purchase bath fittings.
“Is it not a callous approach of the government? There was a lockdown and now everything has gone for a toss. It seems that this government wants revenue even if it comes from the dead,” he rued.
New chief secretary Arun Kumar Mehta said that there will be “zero tolerance on non-adherence to Covid-apt behaviour”.
“There will be zero tolerance on non-adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour. No one has the right to put others’ lives at risk,” he tweeted on the official handle of the health and medical education department.
Liquor shops were closed in the last week of April following imposition of Covid curfew after a successful e-auction which fetched ₹140 crore for one year to the government.
The e-auction replaced the traditional practice of renewal of license, leaving 228 liquor traders without a job.
Setting up of wine shops in residential areas led to protests by residents against the excise department, with the protesters seeking L-G Manoj Sinha’s intervention in shifting the establishments from their areas.
