Listening to strangers;

COVID crisis impact on

the livelihood of people
Sapraz, a small poultry farm owner, sold nearly 500 chickens at a
thumping loss and going out of business after the demand for
chicken plunged due to COVID lockdown. The action by Sapraz was
one of the latest examples of how badly small poultry owners are
being affected by the coronavirus in Sri Lanka. When demand
dropped big players in the industry were able to process the chicken
and store it in their cold room; unfortunately, it wasn’t the case for
Sapraz who entered the poultry business with the hope of
establishing a fully integrated poultry farm.

Soon after the lockdown was relaxed, I was one of the guys who
stood in a long queue to buy a freshly baked roast pan from the royal
bakery. Initially, we all were very cooperative with each other as we
wore a face mask and maintained social distance. However,
maintaining COVID best practices put into sudden jeopardy when
the aroma of freshly baked bread wafts through the line. As the gap
between us reduced, I couldn’t avoid listening to a conversation
between two people who stood in front of me. They had a quite long
conversation, but the one which got my attention was that their
company allowing them to work from home for three days. Those
two may be a clear winner out of this but not the apartment
developers who had borrowed money to their neck and failing to
make a single sale of an apartment after the Corona crisis. The new
work from home concept is going to make this adverse sales
performance from bad to worse as people will be looking for their
new home near the suburbs.

I found taxi drivers to poses exceptional social skills similar to that

of barbers. On a rainy day, I took a Uber taxi to my home from work.
It didn’t take very long for that taxi driver to initiate a conversation
with me. The talk with him was full of complaints; his earnings
dropped to LKR 2,000 from LKR 6,000, the fuel price reduction is
not passed on to the consumers and the government is not doing
enough to support ordinary people like him. The current earnings of
LKR 2,000 per day are not even enough to cover his fuel and meal
costs. Not to ignore the fact that his lease payment of LKR 60,000
per month is getting accumulated from March-20. Until the tourism
sector recovers to its full potential, the accumulation of lease arrears
is a ticking time bomb for leasing companies.