Part-time delivery boys go penniless as food joints sell less

Part time pizza and food delivery boys seem to be first casualty due to the slowdown in the market caused by demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. The youth employed in several part time delivery jobs of perishable items have been forced to sit idle as they are no more required as the purchasing power of citizens has been hit badly. 

“The sale of pizza and other consumables have been decreased by around 40 percent. We have ten permanent delivery boys who are enough to manage the orders of deliveries so all the part time delivery boys have no scope,” said the manager of a Pizza shop in East Delhi indicating towards the parked home delivery vehicles. Young boys and girls in the city are employed by fast food shops for delivery on a contractual basis with some of them being college-goers. 

“In a normal day, I used to earn around Rs 500 but now the source of income has collapsed. I hope the situation will normalise in a week,” said Mukesh Kumar, a part-time delivery boy. He further informed that he and his friends live in the nearby Kondali area. 

“We are connected on WhatsApp and inform them if delivery orders are placed,” he added. This situation is similar in almost all the food joints of the city.

Sales of goods and services are hit in all the sectors in the city. It’s the season of winter clothes but almost all the brands of readymade garments are reporting loss in sales by 35-40 per cent. “In our shop, billing by cash is 35-40 per cent while the rest is through debit and credit cards. As there is no cash with customers, we are facing around 40 per cent decline in sale,” said Amit Kumar who has a shop in EDM Mall which attracts customers from East Delhi and Ghaziabad both. 

The only happy man in the V3S Mall in East Delhi is Amarjeet Singh. “Our company has announced a flat 50 per cent discount on all garments so our sale has increased. The sale of our brand has increased in all the outlets in Delhi and across the country,” he added.

On Sunday, several outlets in the malls faced another problem of receiving payment as websites crashed due to huge traffic. “The system was very slow and crashed several times on Sunday,” said Gopal Singh, manager at a Store 99. According to shopkeepers, they have GPS enabled card swapping machines which become slow as traffic increases.