After a break of one month , all the district registrar and sub-registrar offices were opened for services on Monday following the permission from the state government. However, only a few people turned up to avail the service.
Registration of properties and agreements was stalled due to lockdown. It resulted in unavailability of stamp papers required to execute sale deeds and rental agreements. While real estate sector has come to a standstill, the state government decided to the department for work with some conditions like limiting number of registrations in a day, social distancing and providing hand sanitisers before people entering offices. Less than 50% of the employees had turned for work on day one.
T S Naganathan, secretary of Madurai district document writers’ association, said that till 1 pm there was only one document registered in the district office near Thirumalai Nayak Mahal. Usually, 100 to 150 registrations used to take place in a day, he said. “Just like other sectors, we too are jobless for the past one month. There are 250 documents writers in Madurai district and there are around 6,000 in whole of Tamil Nadu. Government should come forward to help us,” he said.
The city witnessed slightly higher number of people on roads starting from early on Monday morning. Although police allowed them to commute after questioning reasons for leaving out of their houses, they started register cases against those, who loitered unnecessarily after 10 am. “A section of people has started coming out as if the curfew was lifted. The state government made it clear that there will not be any relaxation of restrictions till May 3,” said a police officer. The city police registered 580 cases on Sunday in connection with the violation of curfew restriction.
