Hospitality association head: Gov't bears responsibility for virus spread by keeping ban on indoor restaurants

By extending the ban on indoor restaurants, the government is responsible for the spread of the COVID-19 virus because the customers figure out various solutions to bypass regulations, the president of the Romanian Hotels and Restaurants' Employers Association (HORA) Daniel Mischie told AGERPRES on Wednesday.

The trade association called on all HoReCa workers and employers to join this afternoon a protest against the government's interdiction to opening restaurants and step outside their facilities carrying protest signs.

One of the slogans HORA proposed the protesters to display is a message to the government: "You destroyed the industry for an illusion!"

HORA president Daniel Mischie explains that the illusion the message refers to is that tourism contributes to the spread of the coronavirus.

"The illusion is that tourism is the main factor in the spread of the COVID illness. Just look at the seaside tourism - there is no transmission link between the waiter, cook, taxi driver, maids. So the virus does not necessarily come from the seaside tourism. Obviously it can come from transport or from supermarkets just as much as from tourism, so we are an industry just like all the others. The largest hotspots are actually the local state institutions, the local or central administration, the hospitals, that's where the infection hotspots are. I doubt that you've heard of a restaurant or a hotel that is completely shut down with 80 percent of the employees taken down with COVID. [The virus] exists in this industry just as in the steel industry and so on, we are no exception. This is the illusion and this is what the government is trying to get the people buy, that it's the tourism industry that propagates the virus. This is completely false! Banning operation: the consequence is that the government bears the responsibility, because if we think of the Prohibition era, other solutions were figured out to keep things going while bypassing the rules," Mischie explained.

The HORA president told a press conference Wednesday that there are no cases of infection in the seaside tourist industry and asked the government to allow the opening of indoor restaurants. He also specified for AGERPRES that if the ban stays in place, the government should provide financial compensations for the HoReCa sector.

The protest of the HoReCa representatives takes place on Wednesday between 17:00 and 18:00.