Covid NEWS | NRAI plan vaccination drive for its members across India
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The President of NRAI also announced a soon-to-be-launched vaccination drive the body was planning for its member restaurants in major cities across India.
NRAI has created a corpus in tandem with certain liquor companies, and we will be launching our own vaccination drives in all major cities. We are naming it after two of our deceased management committee members— Santosh Jindal and Vyoum Ghai— and calling it Santosh and Vyoum Vaccination Drive,” said Anurag Katriar, President of the restaurant body NRAI, while speaking to ETHospitalityWorld exclusively.
He added that the drive would kick start as soon as all the necessary data had been collated, adding that the NRAI would pay commercial rates for the vaccines, if necessary, paid to member restaurants to get their employees vaccinated.
On the subject of vaccinating those working in the restaurant industry—especially those traveling back from their homes to the cities, Katriar said that NRAI had written to state governments asking that these workers be treated as frontline staff and be allowed deferential vaccination.
Vaccination was crucial with the lockdowns being slowly eased and Katriar was very happy with the measures in general.
“What had become purely a restaurant turning into a delivery kitchen is at least going to be a restaurant again. I think we can only build from here—the hours will improve and so will the capacity utilisation. So, overall, it's good to be back in business. And we'll wait for the better days to come,” he said.
“These limited hours opening will not have any major impact on sales—whether it is Mumbai, which is operating up to 4pm, or Bengal, which is operating only 5 pm to 8 pm. But, in a way, I'm not very unhappy, at least when it comes to Maharashtra, because there is now some sound logic on which the restaurant openings have been based. These are twin factors of test positivity rate and availability of oxygen. I believe that when the report is released this Thursday, the levels will change in Mumbai, and things will startup,” he said.
As far as advice that the NRAI is giving its members, in fact, restaurant businesses across India. “We are basically suggesting two things, one, when you are operating within the suggested limits, we should not become a contributor to the rise in cases. The second piece of advice I'm offering to every restaurateur is to please build up some resources, while things are opening up, if possible. We have got some support on liquidity from the government, at least the RBI has said that INR 15,000 crores have been kept aside for hospitality,” he said adding that he hoped that banks would follow the advice of the RBI in letter and spirit and it should not become a thing on the paper where financing is located, but the disbursement does not happen.
