Traders at the now-closed MGR Wholesale Vegetable Market, it appears, will have to wait for a few more days before the Coimbatore Corporation provides an alternative place to resume business.
The Corporation had on Friday partially closed the market and on Saturday sealed the entire premises, including the Mettupalayam Road Bus Stand, where it had housed a few traders to ensure physical distancing in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak.
It had to seal the market because three from the place and another trader from the Anna Retail Vegetable Market had tested positive for COVID-19.
The market sources said the Corporation that had provided alternative places at the Ramalingam Chettiar Higher Secondary School on Alagesan Road for the traders at the Anna Retail Vegetable Market, the Devanga Highter Secondary School for flower vendors and the Singanallur Bus Stand for farmers selling their produce at the farmers’ market on Trichy Road should have provided them one as well.
The traders at the market bought and sold 1,000 tonnes of vegetable a day. They bought vegetables from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab and sometimes Delhi as well and sold most of it– nearly 900 tonnes – to Kerala.
The sources said the traders sold the remaining 100 tonnes to traders from Coimbatore.
The Corporation shutting down the market hit hard those traders who had placed orders a day or two earlier and whose vegetables were in transit. They sold their vegetables on the Market-Kavundampalayam stretch of the Mettupalayam Road, amid threat from police to seize the goods, the sources added.
But not all traders did so as a few managed to forward the vegetables to their buyers in Kerala or took their goods to places elsewhere in the city.
The traders said while they appreciated the Corporation’s swift action shutting the market with around 100 traders they looked forward to an alternative location, as it had been only a few weeks since they saw the business to almost pre-COVID-19 days.
Sources in the Corporation said the civic body had begun levelling the ground at the old dump yard in Kavundampalayam – Eru Company – where the traders could resume business. The Corporation would provide only the place but it was up to the traders to create the necessary infrastructure.
