Mumbai: Latest updates from the city on April 20

Commenting on the restricted daily essential store timing order by Maharashtra Government, Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India (RAI), said, “Restricting the time of stores selling daily essentials may lead to crowding, which is a risk to the safety of both store staff and customers and is detrimental to social distancing. It may result in operational challenges, supply chain issues, panic buying and hoarding of essentials commodities. Furthermore, it is grossly inconvenient to customers who now have to manage their essentials shopping in a short time frame.In addition to daily essentials, citizens also need non-food items such as clothing, hardware, electrical, household kitchen items among others on a daily basis and should be able to have access to these needs without hardships. We have also appealed to the state government to permit all sizes and formats of non-food retail to take orders over phone and other electronic means for home deliveries. The non-food store premises can be allowed to be opened to the limited extent of fulfilling home delivery orders while being closed for walk-in customers. This ensures social distancing and convenience to customers.”