All Covid restrictions lifted as city falls in Level-1 category; shops, business establishments to run on regular time

Aurangabad, June 6:

Shops, business establishments dealing with essential and non-essential items will remain open from 7 am normally from June 7 as the city falls under the level-one category.

It may be noted that the State Government imposed strict lockdown curbs since March to reduce the spread of the second Covid 19 wave. All shops, business establishments, excluding essential commodities, were shut down until May 31 completely.

Relaxing lockdown, the Government issued a detailed notification on Friday night to start the unlock process for the State. The unlock process has a ‘five-level lockdown plan’ that will come into effect from June 7 and will be based on the positivity rate of patients and occupancy of beds in each district and cities.

Life in the city will return to normalcy from June 7 as it falls under the level -1 category on the basis of parameters of the unlocking process. All curbs imposed for the second wave of the pandemic were lifted. Shops and business establishments will work on their normal timing. The prohibitory orders and lockdown norms were withdrawn. However, some strict norms will be in force in rural which fall in the level- three category.

President of District Disaster Management Authority and district collector Sunil Chavan, Aurangabad Municipal Corporation administrator Astik Kumar Pandey, commissioner of police Dr Nikhil Gupta studied the five-level unlock process and relaxed strict curbs on Sunday for the city while there will be some norms for rural areas.

The positive patients' rate within the jurisdiction of Aurangabad Municipal Corporation is 2.24 pc while patients pc on oxygen bed is 22.19 pc. The city came under level one of the unlock plan parameters.

All the measures of pandemic issued by the Central will be followed in all markets, malls, theatres and industries. It will be mandatory to maintain six feet distance between two citizens, use of sanitiser, faceshield, e-payment in the market.

All shops, hotels, restaurants, public places, sports ground, open space, parks and gardens, malls, construction, agriculture shops, saloon, beauty parlour, spa, wellness centre, e-commerce services will remain open and there is permission for cycling and morning work.

All the Government, semi-Government and private offices will remain open 100 pc.

Sports events, convention, social and cultural programmes can be held as usual. In addition, there is permission for wedding ceremonies, funeral procession, meetings, elections, general body meetings of local self-governing bodies.

All the public transports services will operate normally but, there will be no permission to travel by standing in the buses. Buses, taxis, railways and private cars will be operated with full passenger capacity.

Exporters, processing industry, data centres, manufacturing companies, IT-industry were given permission to operate on regular timing.

The employees of all industries, shops and private establishments will have to bear the RT-PCR test report, which will be valid for 15 days. Without a test report, shops cannot be opened. The administration will be able to take action if norms of the test are flouted. The responsibility of the city will be with AMC administrator Astik Kumar Pandey while the district collector will be monitoring and controlling authority.

Theatres in the city will reopen from June 2021, first after March 22, 2020 (first wave). But, theatre managers will have to follow all measures.