Hotels, restaurant owners seek reduction in power charges to overcome losses

Ludhiana: As the hospitality industry, including hotels, banquet halls, restaurants, et.c have still not been able to generate decent business due to fear among residents about coronavirus, the businessmen associated with the trade say in view of their losses, the government needs to extend a helping hand towards them and at least reduce the power charges for hotel, marriage palaces and restaurants or allow them to change their meter category to the small power category. If the power rates are reduced then lakhs of rupees of their expenditure would be saved every month and their losses would reduce.
Giving more information on the issue, Amarveer Singh, president of Hotel and Restaurant Association, Ludhiana, said, “The situation is same for the hospitality industry as it was during the lockdown. The only difference is at that time we were suffering losses due to the closure of our hotels, marriage palaces, restaurants, etc. but now we are suffering even more when we have opened them but we have no customers. Regardless of full preparation and spending of huge money by all our members just to safeguard customers and staff during parties and dining out, we are receiving no positive response. People are so scared of coronavirus that they do not want to go anywhere else except for their homes and workplaces. It has been almost 15 days since the hospitality sector in Ludhiana opened up after lockdown but till date there is not even a single hotel , marriage palace or restaurant, which has been able to touch the level of even 50% of their sales as compared to the pre-lockdown time.”
Singh added that, “The only way to survive right now is reduction in the cost of doing business as it would help in narrowing down the gap between our earnings and losses. Hospitality industry is highly dependent on electricity and it is the major factor in deciding the rates and calculating expenses. Presently, we are only allowed to install commercial meters and power is being charged from us at Rs 10 per unit and even more in some cases. If the rates of power are reduced, it will bring down our costs significantly and our losses would also reduce. Therefore, we request the state government to either slash the rates of power or allow us to switch to the small power category meters applicable for small industry or else a large number of hospitality industry units will be forced to permanently shut down because of rising losses”
According to SS Rai, a hotel owner from Model Town, “The rates power are very high for hotels , marriage palaces and restaurants as we are billed under commercial connections, tariffs of which are the highest. Even if we keep our units closed, even then the minimum monthly bills of our properties comes out to be in several lakhs. As present, we do not have any business in hand, nor there are any queries for the future months. We request the government to reduce the power tariff for the hospitality industry to Rs 5 per unit for at least one year from now so that we can face this difficult time.”