Shop's community focus during outbreak

A shop owner in the Washington area has said everything he has been dealing with over the last few weeks has left him “physically and emotionally tired”.

Volunteers have been delivering essential items from Nisa Local in Bar ms ton to a number of elderly people and others classed as vulnerable who are in self isolation due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Owner Bob Singh has been speaking about this and other issues, whilst also praising his “fantastic staff for their efforts during an extremely busy period”.

He added: “As well as the panic buying, I’ve had to deal with greed from retailers and wholesalers – for example, I was charging £6 per hand gel unit, but I did not make any profit because that was the cost from the wholesaler.

“But the positives have been the community spirit and all the volunteers delivering bread and toilet roll that we still managed to get to people who really needed these items.

“It was set-up through asking people to send us private messages via the What’s on in Washington Facebook page and we’ve been doing this every day for about the last 12 days.

“The message from this is for people to think of others who are vulnerable and will be scared to go outside at all.

“Some shopkeepers can’t afford to do this, but I could and felt it was the right thing to do.

“If you are able to give back at times like this and don’t, then what’s the point?

“All this has made me feel physically and emotionally tired at the same time.”