New Delhi: As almost the entire country went into lockdown on Monday, while food delivery services were one of the essential services exempt, they too were hit by the curfew with a lesser number of delivery executives working, extremely long waiting hours for customers and understaffed kitchens in restaurants. Several delivery executives said that kitchens were making them wait for unusually long hours and that less than 50 per cent of executives were working in light of the lockdown. Food delivery services like Zomato and Swiggy showed normal waiting times for delivery services, however, once the order was placed, the waiting times kept increasing. In fact, when this reporter had placed an order on Zomato on Tuesday afternoon, the application had shown a waiting time of 30 minutes but the food was delivered more than an hour and a half after the order was placed. Zomato delivery executive Indersen Singh said that such conditions were not at all ideal for him and many others like him to work. While the middle-aged uses a bicycle to deliver orders, Singh said that restaurants were severely understaffed which was resulting in longer waiting times for them in the kitchen. According to Singh, on a usual day, there are at least 50-60 delivery executives active in the East of Kailash area but today "you can see, there are only 28," he said, showing his smartphone application. "All of us have been put in a tight spot and with the curfew underway, we have also been facing harassment from police," he said. Several delivery executives had complained that Delhi Police had stopped them and taken their vehicle keys as they were not wearing the delivery service jackets provided by their respective companies. "Some of them did not have the Swiggy or Zomato jacket so cops stopped them and in some cases, cops do not notice the delivery bag and stop us to enforce the curfew," Singh said.

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