Marriage hall owners rue new health dept guidelines

Mysuru: The health department’s new advisory of only 50 guests and restrictions on using air-conditioned function and marriage halls could hit the wedding industry hard.
Proprietors of marriage halls are worried as the directive will leave thousands of individuals in the lurch. Cooks, flower decorators, hoteliers, cab operators and salon and cosmetic industry workers could lose their daily bread.
The department’s guidelines say the venues must be well ventilated. Owners of marriage halls are peeved as several marriages scheduled from April to June have been put off.
Harish Kumar Hegde, proprietar, Shubhodini Convention Hall, said: “We have invested crores of rupees to create facilities. Now, we’re worried about how to repay the loans. Those who booked the hall for marriages have cancelled them and are demanding we return the advance amount that we have used to pay staff salaries and power bills. We asked them to hold marriages at a future date. If this is the plight of owners, thousands others including cooks, flower decorators and workers in the bottled water industry as well as beauty and cosmetic sector are suffering.”
Hegde said: “People spend a part of their savings on wedding, apart from building homes. Imposing restrictions on marriage will have long-term repercussion on various industries which depend on weddings.”
Srinivas Rao, president, Cooks Welfare Association, “Thousands of cooks in the region are without work since the lockdown started. For the first time in our lives, we’ve been without work during this peak season. These fresh guidelines will leave us without work”.