Mumbai and Navi Mumbai residents may face shortage of vegetables and fruits after March 25 as the Maharashtra Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) has decided to close down its Vashi market for a week amidst the coronavirus pandemic. They have appealed the citizens to stock the vegetables for next one week.
The Maharashtra Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) has decided to close down its Vashi market from March 25 to March 31. The Vashi Market is the main wholesale market for Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, and Thane. “The fruit, veggies, potato, and onion trader association in APMC has taken this suo-moto initiative in the wake of coronavirus outbreak. We will not accept any agricultural produce. Therefore farmers should not bring their produce to the market during this period,” Shankar Pingle, Director of APMC told FPJ.
There are more than 2000 traders working in the Vashi Market of APMC. This market is spread in 170 acres.
“We are working on Tuesday and from Wednesday we will not work. Therefore we appeal all to stock vegetables for next week,” Pingle added.
500-700 trucks of fruit and vegetables come to the market yard daily. “As the 90 per cent of labourers have gone to their native villages due to coronavirus fear, we are already facing acute shortage of labour force. Therefore to save traders, labourers and farmers from the virus, we decided to close the market for one week,” he said.
Few days before, APMC has decided to keep the market closed on every Thursday for cleaning and disinfection of the market to fight against the pandemic. But now it has decided to close market for the whole week.
