Hoteliers run out of patience over government’s inaction

BATHINDA: Protesting against the Punjab government’s ‘wait and watch’ policy on the Supreme Court’s order banning selling of liquor within 500 m radius of national and state highways, members of the Punjab State Hotel Association today convened a meeting here.

Nikhila Pant Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, April 26

Protesting against the Punjab government’s ‘wait and watch’ policy on the Supreme Court’s order banning selling of liquor within 500 m radius of national and state highways, members of the Punjab State Hotel Association today convened a meeting here.

Claiming that ever since the SC ban was implemented on April 1, Punjab’s hotel industry has suffered a loss of about Rs 2,600 crore of which the state government has also suffered revenue loss of Rs 1,300 crore during these days.

Addressing the meeting of hoteliers, restaurant and bar owners, state president of the association, Satish Arora, claimed that the state government was taking the Supreme Court lightly and if it continued to ignore the demands of the hotel and bar owners, the industry would stare in the face of closure and the state treasury would face massive losses.

Demanding that the state government must immediately take measures to denotify the state highways, the hoteliers said this was the way out of the SC ban and it was devised and being implemented by many states.

Claiming that Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal had promised that the issue would be resolved and the state government would take a concrete steps to ease the problem within the first week of the month, Arora said although the month had come to an end, the state government was yet to announce a policy.

The association members added that several allied industries were attached to the functioning of the hotels, these industries were also suffering badly and their employees were on the verge of getting unemployed.

Stating that this was the last time that the hotel association was urging the state government to devise a way out to ease the problems of the industry, the association members threatened that in case the state government continued to ignore their demands, they would be left with no option but to stage protests and take to roads with their family members.