Agitating businessmen demand market reopening   

Traders and businessmen demonstrated for market reopening for the third consecutive day Tuesday in Dhaka and several district headquarters amid the weeklong lockdown to contain coronavirus resurgence.

The businessmen demanded that the government allow the markets to remain open even on a limited scale with virus safety measures in place.    

As the city bus services resume on Wednesday amid the lockdown, shop owners said they are hopeful that the government would also consider their demand.      

"Already public transportations has been permitted. So why not the markets on a limited scale," Helal Uddin, president of the Bangladesh Shop Owners Association, told The Business Standard.

In the meantime, Monir Hossain, a restaurant owner in Dhaka, said, "It doesn't matter anymore if I die from coronavirus infection since I must provide my family with three meals a day as long as I am alive."

Traders of New Market, Chandni Chwak and Gausia market – who took to the street from 10am to 1pm Tuesday – said the two weeks from Shab-e Barat to Ramadan are very important for their business.     

The traders said they had to keep their shops shuttered for more than two months during the countrywide shutdown last year. Businesses just started to turn around from the losses due to the closure, and they had been planning recovery riding on this year's Boishakh and Eid sales.

But the sudden decision to lock down everything had jeopardised everything, traders said, adding the government could have alerted them beforehand as the virus cases spiked in March. 

"Now, the government should allow us to remain open at least in daytime," said Md Mosharraof Hossain, joint-secretary of Gausia Shop Owners' Association, adding, "Otherwise, thousands of businessmen would starve to death."

Apart from Dhaka's New Market, Old Dhaka's Bangshal and Chawkbazar businessmen also walked in agitation marches Tuesday.  

Bangshal motor parts businessman Shaon Ahmed said he might have to halve the salaries of his workers if the lockdown prolongs.

Like Shaon, other businessmen at the motor parts hub with at least 650 registered shops with more than 3,000 employees talk about job and salary cuts. Shaon said around 2,000 workers had to leave Bangshal after losing jobs during the last year's shutdown.

Asheq Ahmed, Chawkbazar polythene traders' association leader, said they had been witnessing growing sales ahead of the Eid until the stay-at-home order was enforced.  

"The lockdown came at a time when the traders give the staff Eid bonuses after completing boosted sales centring the Eid," another Old Dhaka businessman Miraj Hossain told TBS.      

Lockdown drives the final nail in the coffin: Traders  

Small ventures said they had already been exhausted with bank loans for around a year, and now the lockdown puts the final nail in the coffin.     

Chandni Chwak trader Selim Ahmed said they had been incurring losses since the virus outbreak in Bangladesh last year. If the shops remain shuttered, the losses would mount up.  

Chandni Chwak has around 1,200 shops that employ around 10,000 people.

Selim Khan, a businessman on Elephant Road, told TBS, "My shop is the lone means of living for me and my family. If it remains shuttered, we all reach on the verge of starvation."

Shahin Alam, a bookseller at Nilkhet, said their sales had already been plummeting owing to the pandemic fallout. "I can only manage the shop rent if the market opens. Now that has gone away too," he said.

Protests flare up in districts 

The Business Standard Narayanganj correspondent reported that businessmen in the district also staged demonstrations.

They warn authorities that if the markets are not reopened, they would open the shops on their own.

Meanwhile, an executive magistrate had to leave the scene while conducting a mobile court in the face of protests in Satkhira. Police later reached the spot and calmed the agitated traders.

In Tongi, businessmen formed a human chain demanding market reopening on a limited scale.  

In Cumilla, traders blocked the Kandirpar-Chawkbazar road with the market reopening demand.

Atik Ullah Khokon, general secretary of the Cumilla Shop Owners' Association, said, "we will not leave the street until the government meets our demand."