madurai as the lockdown restrictions were eased slightly on monday there was slight increase in the number of vehicles hitting the city roads forcing the traffic police to operate signals at some busy junctions like goripalayam and kalavasal however there were no traffic congestion or snarl said officialsthere was around 30 vehicular movement on city roads compared to usual days the number of twowheelers hitting the roads was way higher than a normal lockdown day however there has not been any traffic congestion as public transport like buses and auto rickshaw which used create congestion stayed off roads a few auto rickshaws came out and they were booked for violation a city traffic official saidmost of the shops were closed in the city with only a few mobile recharge shops tailoring units electrical appliance repair shops hardware and electrical shops kept open but more number of hotels eateries and bakeries started functioning but they restricted to parcel service as per the state governments order a few mobile shops which opened in the morning soon closed as others did not come forward to open shopsconstruction activity in the city has not taken off yet as builders are awaiting clarification from the district administration on getting passes and availability of raw materials madurai corporation is planning to wait a couple more days before resuming construction activities on smart city projects a meeting to check the preparedness of contractors was held at the corporation main office led by city engineering s arasu in which the contractors were asked to prepare their men to start works tiny small and medium industries in rural areas would start operation in a few days said k p murugan president of madurai district tiny and small scale industries association however they have to wait till may 17 for the units in the city to start functioning there are around 800 printing and allied units in city alone employing 20000 people he saidunits in rural areas will start operation from wednesday onwards we will stick to the guidelines from the district administration that vehicles should be operated with only half he capacity to transport employees we are working with officials to bring raw materials safely from other districts and state murugan added