Amazon, Flipkart Seek Curfew Passes As States Extend Lockdown

With many state governments planning to extend the lockdown beyond April 14, ecommerce players like Amazon, Flipkart, Bigbasket, Grofers, among others have started to urge the government to provide their delivery partners with curfew passes to meet the demand for essential items.

According to a BS report, some ecommerce players are also seeking easy passage amid lockdown to deliver electronic products. Currently, these companies are seeking to get passes for four to six months as the current passes are going to expire on April 14. These passes will also help these companies stock up on products to meet the increased online demand.

Also, these ecommerce players have urged the government to come up with a facility for digital curfew passes. Such a system will save delivery-partners time spend in dealing with local authorities. A similar system has been already instated by the Delhi government. They have also requested the governments to provide complete state curfew passes instead of district-wise passes.

“All these curfew passes and approvals that they are giving are valid until April 14. So, if the lockdown is extended by two more weeks, then again you have to run to collect the curfew passes,” an ecommerce company executive said. Moreover, the government has issued no instructions on whether it is going to continue the lockdown for a few weeks or for some months.

No Equipment To Work  From Home

With the announcement of the lockdown, most of the companies in India have asked their employees to work from home. But the lockdown was instated on such short notice that most of the employers or employees to buy equipment like laptops, computer accessories, WiFi dongles, among other things to enable work from home.

Further, most of the schools and colleges have also switched to online live classes amid live classes. In this case, many parents have complained that they are not able to buy computer gadgets such as webcams, speakers, printer inks among others.

A LocalCircles survey pointed out that around 43% of homes don’t the appropriate computer hardware needed for their children to participate in online classes. As a result, many people have dropped their requests to government authorities and ecommerce companies to help them get access to these devices.

Therefore, ecommerce companies have now also asked the government to add more products to the essential products category. They have also urged the government to take an example of China which allowed the delivery of some of these products from Alibaba, JD.com, among other companies.