Idling trucks, staff shortage: Bottlenecks for industries amid lockdown

Close to 3.5 million trucks (along with their drivers and assistants) are off the road - some because of manpower shortage, and some because they are stuck in various parts of the country.

Jeetendra Kumar Yadav has been parked close to the Daman border since March 23.  Yadav had to unload his truck carrying PTA (an input used for making synthetic yarns) at a Daman-based factory but he couldn’t move ahead because of the lockdown. After unloading his truck, Vijay Ram, a truck driver from Uttar Pradesh, too, has been held up in Navsari in Gujarat. He couldn’t pick up a load from another company and return to Mumbai.
 

The tales of Yadav and Ram show that despite a series of notifications and guidelines, the movement of trucks remains severely affected because of