Covid vaccine deadline for traders, businessmen extended to Aug 15

Several trade body leaders had made requests to the state government on the ground that there was shortage of vaccines that had made it difficult to cover the entire community within the deadline and had sought more time from the government.

Looking at the shortage, the government had dedicated last Sunday to vaccinating only the business and trading community. Over lakhs of textile traders and their employees are left to take the first dose of vaccine in Surat city.

Surat has around 65,000 textile trading shops which employs over 4 lakh people. The entire segment of the textile industry, which includes powerloom factories and dyeing and printing mills, employs 10 lakh people.

Confederation of All India Textile Traders Gujarat chapter vice-president Champalal Bothra said, “There are over lakhs of people in the textile trading industry who had not got the first dose of vaccine, due to the shortage. Similar number of figures are three in other segments of textile industry. Two days ago, we wrote to Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and requested to extend the deadline till August 31, so that the majority of them will be covered. Today, the government decided to extend the deadline till August 15… We don’t hope that it will cover the entire textile or diamond industry.”

The health department of SMC on Friday said a total of 22,668 people had taken vaccine in Surat city, while on Saturday over 20,000 vaccine doses were administered at 107 centres across the city.