No customers, cloth traders, tailors hit hard in Mandi

Dipender Manta

Tribune News Service

Mandi, June 7

Despite resumption of business, sales of most of cloth merchants in the once bustling markets stand at a mere 15 per cent with little chance of these picking up.

The town has a sizeable number of cloth shops in Indira Market, Moti Bazaar and other markets. All shops in the town remained closed from March 22 onwards till they opened recently.

I open my shop daily in the hope that today will be a better day, but by the end

of the day the same despair and gloom set in. — Inam Singh, Cloth trader

With marriages, festivals and fairs not being celebrated, these are not just cloth merchants but those running readymade garment shops and tailors, who have been hit hard. The sales staff working in these shops have lost jobs. The workers engaged by these cloth merchants belong to the suburbs of the town and their future is uncertain now. Mandi is famous for its cloth shops. People from the adjoining districts like Bilaspur, Kullu and Hamirpur come here for shopping. Even the readymade garments industry has been hit badly.

Kiranbir Singh and Harjeet Singh, cloth merchants, said, “We have been able to witness merely 15 per cent business, which is too meager to meet the expenses of running the business. We are paying salary of workers from our own pocket because sales are negligible these days”.