For several months, Ashish Rana, 50, a salesman at a pharmacy in Kalbadevi, has been spending nine hours a day travelling to his workplace from his home in Dombivli. Like him, thousands of pharmacy staffers and owners who were working during the lockdown, have demanded railway passes and have threatened to go on strike if they are not considered essential services workers.

Rana's employer has rented a car for him and two of his co-workers who live in Dombivli. "During the lockdown months we would reach in a couple of hours. But now it takes much longer and I spend barely five hours at the shop. Our owner pays for the travel," he said.