Amid rumours on possible public restrictions due to spread of COVID-19 virus, residents of Tiruchi on Thursday made a beeline to grocery stores, shopping malls and vegetable markets so as to stock up on essential commodities.
Though the trend was noticed on Wednesday evening, more and more people hit the market to buy groceries and vegetables on Thursday. The Gandhi Market, which houses a number of vegetables, fruits and meat stalls, witnessed a sharp rise in customers than usual. The grocery shops too drew more customers than normal days. Similar was the scene in farmers’ market (uzhavar sandy) in Anna Nagar, K.K. Nagar and others. The shopping malls, which have dedicated wings for groceries too received more customers. They paid more attention on buying vegetables and fruits. Many residents bought vegetables for at least seven days.
“We do not know what will happen tomorrow. We need to stock up the essential commodities as a precautionary step, I have bought vegetables for a week,” said M. Karthika of Cantonment, who shopped at a retail chain store on Reynolds Road. There were customers, who bought biscuits, noodles and ready mix food packets. Toiletries, soaps and hand wash liquid were among those largely bought by them. Most of the customers invariably looked for sanitisers. But, they ended up disappointed as the employees told them that there was no stock. But, a section of customers did not show any sign of panic buying. They bought vegetables only for one or two days.
L. Mallika of Bheema Nagar said that she did not foresee complete lock down. There would not be any problem in getting essential items. Hence, there was no need for buying essentials for a long period, she said.
While agreeing that the customers had been indulging in panic buying to some extent, a manager of a chain store told The Hindu that the sale of essential commodities had gone up considerably. Stocks of many commodities were exhausting fast. There was a shortage of some items as the supply chain was struggling to replace them due to transportation issues.
