New Delhi, Feb 14 (KNN) The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has put forward its demand seeking compensation for traders owing to the loss of business during the three lockdowns caused by the Covid pandemic.

In view of this, the traders' body has sent a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, urging to issue an advisory to all State Governments to compensate the Section 12 clearly states that compensation for the loss of the people affected by any calamity will be provided by the State government to restore the means of earning livelihood and National Disaster Management Authority should issue guidelines.

CAIT’s National President B C Bhartia & Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal raised this issue and said that due to the Corona pandemic, the government has thrice imposed lock down in Delhi since 2020, in which the first 2 lockdowns were for a long time and the traders were given the orders to close their shops.

“While this year due to the rapid increase in the covid cases, the government imposed many restrictions, due to which the means of livelihood of the traders of Delhi were badly affected,” they added.

Emphasising on the plight of the traders, they further said due to these circumstances, not only businesses were affected, but since then the traders have to face financial crisis on a large scale.

“It is to be known that neither the Central Government or the Delhi Government, neither gave any economic package nor any assistance to the traders, while other sections of the economy were given economic package & assistance in various ways. Due to all this, the traders of Delhi are facing a lot of difficulties in running their business smoothly again,” Bhartia & Khandelwal added.

The senior members said that today the traders of the country are fighting for survival of their businesses and large number of traders are in huge debts.

Paying interest to banks and other financial institutions has impacted the livelihood of the traders and the government must take responsibility, the senior officials of CAIT stated.

Hence, we urge Union Minister Amit Shah to follow the Section 12 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, to issue directions to State Governments to compensate the loss immediately, they said.

(KNN Bureau)