Diwali preparations hit by Covid delays and driver shortages

Diwali preparations hit by Covid delays and driver shortages
PA
Elly Blake2 November 2021

People celebrating Diwali have had their preparations affected by Covid-19 delays and a shortage of lorry drivers.

One shop owner in Bolton told the BBC that she was only getting one delivery per week from India as opposed to the four she received pre-pandemic.

Sital Raja-Arjan, who runs House of Raja’s said: “Goods weren’t here on time, so come Diwali, I’ll be left with a lot of surplus stock,” she said.

“We usually get 6,000 to 7,000 packets of halwa [a sweet dish], we’ve been lucky to get 900.

“We’ve had to be very tight.”

The shop sells everything for the festivities, from brightly coloured and heavily embroidered silk saris to candles, curries and sweets.

Ms Raja-Arjan said she was surprised by the delivery problems, which were also made worse to due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

She continued: “When you’ve done the same process for 30 years and suddenly that process is taken away... we never had a plan B, because we never knew we’d get Covid,” she said.

In October, the government introduced temporary visas for 5,000 lorry drivers amid a supply shortage.

Shoppers who usually travel to India to buy goods for Diwali have not been able to travel this year due to Covid-19 restrictions - and instead have had to make other plans.

Hiren Patel, 29, said the celebrations required specific purchases, such as “certain specific flours you need for certain specific ingredients”, but “even just cost of things going up has an impact on what delicacies we would usually make”.

This will be the second consecutive year Diwali celebrations have been hampered due to Covid-19.

Last year, festivities were scaled back due to the pandemic, as England entered a four-week lockdown which banned family get-togethers for those outside of the same household unless in a support bubble.

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