Published On : Sat, Mar 20th, 2021

Step motherly behaviour to hotels & restaurants, absolutely unacceptable – NRHA

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Restaurants and Banquet Halls are closed by Administration since the last 15 days in Nagpur and after a lot of follow-up and requests; the latest extension order permits restaurants to remain open till 7 pm.

Tejinder Singh Renu, president and Deepak Khurana, secretary of Nagpur Residential Hotels Association (NRHA) by a joint press release condemned the way the Administration is treating the Hospitality Sector of the city.

While all shops are permitted to remain open till 4 pm; administration should have permitted restaurants to remain open from 4 to 11 pm. NRHA has always supported action against those who do not follow distancing and other Covid safety protocols. So if any restaurant is found not following requisite SOPs, administration should take action on them.

All our members are following due precautions. Administration needs to understand that punishment shouldn’t be on those who are following all guidelines; why should they be punished for wrongdoings of others?

It would have been better if restaurants were asked to remain shut rather than 7 pm norm; in that case we’ll at least save our expenses like salaries, electricity bills, raw materials, administration expenses. Although online is permitted till 11 pm, however this was even permitted when there was a total curfew last year.

Hospitality sector has devoted much of their energy and resources when we witnessed the first lockdown as few restaurants and hotels run their kitchen to offer free meals to the needy. We are not begging for any favours for our generosity in the past, but are legitimately demanding for our rights.

Everyone knows that Restaurants do business only during dinner time and with 7 pm closing time, we’ll only add to losses through daily running costs.

Western Maharashtra is also seeing the same surge in case numbers, but only Nagpur is being punished by such kind of lockdown. NRHA fails to understand why this step-motherly treatment, only to Nagpur.