Grim faces dot empty roads
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By 3:30pm, he was unable to recover his costs -- a contrast to previous days, when he saw a mad rush to buy vegetables as many city dwellers stockpiled food.
By the same time on Tuesday, he had had many customers crowding his van and had earned Tk 300 on top of his investment of Tk 1,200 for the vegetables.
“This is the worst day in the past week. Now I am worried whether I will be able to realise my investment,” said Monirul on Wednesday while waiting for customers. He earned only Tk 900 from sales and a good quantity of vegetables remained unsold.
“There weren’t many people, even in the morning. People have gone home.”
As demand drops, it means a loss of income for small traders who depend on daily customers buying fresh produce.
“People are not buying,” said Babul, who was selling vegetables on a van on Zakir Hossain Road of Mohammadpur.
By early afternoon on Wednesday, he was unable to sell half of the potatoes and onions he had sold on Tuesday.
Traders at the Mohammadpur Town Hall kitchen market and Karwan Bazar kitchen market had similar experiences.
Shopper turnout has declined -- easing pressure on the stock of essential commodities in the market and thus, on prices.
Since early this week, panic buying and stockpiling by many residents fearing possible supply disruption and an imminent lockdown pushed up the prices of most essential foodstuffs except of packaged salt.
The price of onions, on the downturn for the past several weeks after arrival of a fresh harvest, edged up.
Farmers completed the potato harvest in February. Yet, its price too went up amid rising customer demand along with prices of staples rice, flour, edible oil, and lentils.
“The market had earlier been on the upward trend because of higher number of purchases by customers. Prices have now stabilised,” said Dhiren Chandra Ghosh, owner of Madaripur Rice Store at the Mohammadpur Town Hall kitchen market.
Ruhul Amin, who mainly sells onions and potatoes, said customer flow dropped from Tuesday.
“We bought onions at higher prices and it appears that we will have to incur losses if the customer demands continue to remain low,” he said.
Customers are decreasing day by day, said Delwar Hossain Kusum, a seller at Karwan Bazar kitchen market. He himself didn’t venture to the market yesterday as a result.
Shoppers’ presence at superstore retail chains such as Meena Bazar and Shwapno was also limited.
Yet both retail chains had put limits on sale of some key commodities, in a measure that was introduced by retailers recently in order to discourage stockpiling seen earlier in the week.
For example, a customer is able to buy 15kg of rice and five kilogrammes of onion in one go at Shwapno.
“It is madness to try to survive by hoarding. I know I won’t be able to hoard anything enough to survive for an indefinite period,” said Hasan Tarique Chowdhury, while shopping at Unimart at Satmasjid Road in Dhanmondi on Wednesday.
He said he could not buy a single mask as others had bought masks in large numbers, in the early days of the outbreak.
“Ultimately the tendency of stocking hurts me as a customer,” said Hasan, a lawyer by profession.
“But the good sign today is that there is no mad rush among my fellow shoppers to buy in large quantities. It appears to me that the global spread of coronavirus and its massive effect on our lives have stirred our values and sense of humanity,” he added.
Rasad Kabir, operations manager of Unimart’s Dhanmondi branch, said the pressure of customers buying groceries had been reduced on Tuesday from the situation earlier in the week.
“Most of the customers are buying groceries and hygiene products,” he said.
Grocery corners and shelves of items such as hand sanitiser and liquid hand wash, which salespersons struggled to keep replenished in stores early this week, were seen fully stocked on Wednesday.
But for small vegetable sellers like Monirul, the situation is dire.
He was looking for customers to buy and help him clear his remaining perishable stock, so that he could make back the money he spent that morning and have some left over for his needs.
For Monirul, staying at home to avoid the risk of infection by COVID-19 is not an option. But his customers, and so, his only source of income, is drying up.