Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to ensure seamless movement of goods across States through inter-State borders during the 21-day lockdown enforced to check the spread of the spread of the new Coronavirus aka (COVID-19.)
The Chief Minister said the movement of goods may be permitted seamlessly across the country without any differentiation as there are long queues of couple of kms in the inter-State borders.
“Differentiation of foods as essential and non-essential will lead to discretion, corruption and dislocation at check gate level. It may lead to chaos and affect the movement of essential goods as well. In fact I understand there are long queues extending to couple of kms in the inter-State borders. I am sharing this from our experience in handling natural disasters whenever we have made a differentiation between essential and non-essential goods, the overall movement, especially of essential goods get affected,” Patnaik said in the letter.
Patnaik said, “At that same time it is difficult to prepare a comprehensive list of essential and non-essential goods and get it enforced practically at the field level. Hence, I suggest that movement of goods may be permitted seamlessly across the country without any differentiation in order to avoid clogging at check gates that may adversely impact supply of essential goods.”
“I would request you to take a decision in this matter on an urgent basis. The biggest challenge for the country will be to ensure availability of goods across the country especially in view of the lockdown,” urged the Chief Minister.
