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This is an archive article published on May 21, 2020

Pune: PCMC seeks state’s permission to keep some restrictions intact in non-containment zones

Additional Municipal Commissioner Santosh Patil said the administration does not want to give complete relaxations. “In the neighbouring Pune, the cases are on the rise.

Chandigarh coronavirus cases, Bapu Dham coronavirus cases, Punjab coronavirus cases, Coronavirus cases Chandigarh, Chandigarh news, city news, Indian Express Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar told The Indian Express that restrictions in the industrial city will be relaxed from May 22.

The Pimpri-Chinchwad administration is planning to relax restrictions after the area was notified as non-red zone by the state government. However, the civic administration also wants some restrictions to continue to keep the Covid-19 situation under control.

While all shops will remain open from 9 am to 5 pm, the civic body is also likely to allow vegetable markets at 13 places to start functioning.

Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar told The Indian Express that restrictions in the industrial city will be relaxed from May 22. “We will finalise the guidelines by Thursday and release them the same day. We are planning to ease some restrictions but that is being done after due deliberations,” he said.

He added, “In the state guidelines issued on Tuesday, only Pune Municipal Corporation is mentioned in red zone while there is no mention of Pimpri-Chinchwad…”

Pimpri-Chinchwad has 42 containment zones.

Additional Municipal Commissioner Santosh Patil said the administration does not want to give complete relaxations. “In the neighbouring Pune, the cases are on the rise. There is constant movement of people between the two cities. That’s why we do not want to lower our guard. In containment zones, nothing will be relaxed,” he said.

Patil said they have sought special permission from the state government to let some restrictions remain in place to stop any spread of infection.

“We are planning to allow all non-essential shops in residential areas and outside to remain open, but shopping malls will remain shut. Shopkeepers will not be required to seek permission from the civic administration. This will reduce our workload too,” he said.

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On the opening of 13 vegetable markets, Patil said, “We are planning to open them up with restrictions. One part of the market will be open on one day while another part on the other day. It will be finalised by Thursday.”

Currently, the PCMC has set up designated vegetable markets in open plots in several suburbs and is strictly monitoring the movement of customers and vendors.

Meanwhile, Pimpri-Chinchwad registered one more Covid-19 death on Wednesday. Patil said a 65-year-old woman with co-morbidity in the form acute diabetes, died in the area on Wednesday.

The total number of deaths in the twin city has gone up to 16 while the area has so far seen 242 cases.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More


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