Gym owners protest, demand opening of fitness centres

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 2

Gym owners held a protest against the government for not allowing them to open their centres here on Wednesday. They said the government had permitted all businesses, including liquor vends to function but gyms were not allowed to function even with restrictions.

Raising slogans against the government’s restrictions they sought immediate lifting of the restrictions. Some of them even took out their upper clothes to show their six-pack body to convey their resentment at the government’s insensitive attitude toward gyms. They complain that it was the second closure for the gyms during the past 14 months. “Gyms have been closed for the past nearly three months and their establishments were closed for nearly seven months last year, said a gym owner Deepak.

He hit out at the government that the guidelines were only for gyms while all other sections of trade and industry were allowed. A majority of gym owners have to pay rent of their premises, salaries to employees, power tariff, maintenance cost of machineries and other unseen expenditures, besides they have to feed their families too.