The transporters, meanwhile, are reporting an increase in queries and business, but are of the view that this is just a temporary situation and will not benefit them in the long run.

Vinod Thapar, chairman of the Knitwear Club said, “After more than six months, demand for garments and hosiery goods has started picking up, but unfortunately the railways, which is the lifeline of the garment industry, had to suspend its operations due to farmers’ agitation. A huge quantity of cartons of garments were brought back from the railway station by our member factories after all trains were suspended last week from Ludhiana. Now, all consignments are being dispatched through road transport. Moreover, we have decided that until the operations of the railways resume fully, we will use road transport only. Though it’s costlier than railways, we are helpless as we cannot afford to take risk of cancellation of our orders.”

Charan Singh Lohara, chairman of All India Motor Transport Congress, added that, “There has been a little increase in inquiries from customers during the past few days, especially for longer routes like Assam, West Bengal, etc. This movement in our business is temporary and whenever in the next few days trains will start running the situation will be again the same for us. Our trade has suffered the most in the last months as we had to sit idle without business as the factories, shops, stores, etc. were not open. But there was no respite for us in terms of expenditure and as a result every transport owner has been left cash-strapped now. All our requests to the central government to help us have fallen on deaf ears and it seems unlikely that anything will be done for the transporters in this country.”

According to Niranjan Singh, another transporter from city, “As of now, we are getting maximum queries from garment factories while rest of our business is still at about 40% as compared to earlier times. In the long run the garment industry will never opt for road transport for their deliveries for long routes as trucks take lot of time for delivery as compared to railways and freight of road transport is costlier too.”