News
Traders hope next eight days will make their tills ring
Pettah yesterday. Little thought for social distancing as people get into the Avurudu spirit. Pic by Priyanka Samaraweera
With the Sinhala-Tamil New Year just eight days away, shopping and business is slowly picking up with some of last year’s intense caution about keeping to COVID-19 health guidelines now evaporating.
“People can be seen wearing masks and washing their hands but they have forgotten to maintain social distance,” one shopkeeper said.
But, he added, “It’s important that people are preparing to celebrate the Sinhala and Hindu new year enthusiastically”.
There is confusion about hygiene at clothes shops, with some allowing customers to try clothes on and others refusing this benefit.
Matara resident Ayesha Herath, 30, said she saw people trying on clothes that had previously been put on by a previous customer, with no disinfection of the garments in between wearings.
Most businesses were forced to close down last year when a new wave of COVID cases coincided with the New Year but this year most have at least been able to keep their doors open.
There is, nevertheless, little of the usual hustle and bustle in streets and shops.
“Jaffna town is usually a hive of activity at the New Year, with traders and customers filling the streets, but not this time,” a resident of the northern city, Pathum Ranasinghe, 28, said. “I suppose some are too financially vulnerable to want to celebrate.”
The tradition of wearing new clothes at Avurudu time is seeing some profit-making at textile shops, a spokesman for Thilakawardhana Textiles said.
A shop owner in Matugama, Anura Dissanayake, agreed. “People are coming to buy goods now, unlike in the past few days,” he said, adding that Matugama Market and textile shops were “overflowing with customers”.
Fireworks vendors are hoping to make some gains this year after disastrous sales in 2019-2020.
“We couldn’t sell firecrackers for two years,” the owner of the large Alidon fireworks company, S. Dayawansa, said. “Last year, sales were hit by COVID restrictions and the previous year, due to the Easter bombing attack, our sales dropped. A lot of fireworks had to be discarded.”
The 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, which occurred just after the New Year, caused many continuing Avurudu celebrations to be cancelled, bringing the demand for fireworks to zero at that time.