The Amsterdam catering industry listened with indignation to the press conference yesterday in which the cabinet announced new rules. From Monday, entrepreneurs must ask all their guests for name and contact details and their business must be closed for two weeks if an infection is detected in someone who has been in the business. Especially about the last line you can count on furrowed eyebrows.
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‘Arbitrariness and legal inequality’, Won Yip, owner of several businesses on the Dam, calls the tightened regulations. ‘You don’t have to close a company if it adheres to all the rules,’ says the entrepreneur himself introduced a duty of mouth masks for all its staff.
According to Pim Evers of the Amsterdam department of Koninklijke Horeca Nederland (KHN), entrepreneurs take all imposed rules very seriously, but a duty to close for fourteen days after an infection is really going too far, according to him. Then all hell breaks loose. We are not going to accept such punishments, ‘Evers assures us.
All guests register a huge effort
The cabinet also wants catering establishments to register the details of all their guests, so that a contact investigation can easily be carried out if one of the guests appears to have been infected afterwards. Yip has strong doubts whether this will work. “If people leave their phone number here, is it the correct one?” He wonders.
Today it also became clear that the GGD is due to understaffing stops calling all contacts of a corona patient. Evers: ‘It is quite a challenge for a catering company, with hundreds of guests a day, to register everything. And are we doing it for something? Certainly with a news item like today, most entrepreneurs lose heart. ‘
The KHN will not give up for the time being and will try to adjust the announced rules. Won Yip reluctantly prepares for next week, when the measures will take effect. ‘What should that have to be done, father can do what he wants’, according to the catering entrepreneur.
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