Hyderabad: Severe staff crunch serves up pain

Hyderabad: With guest labourers leaving for their home states, the Irani Hotels in the city are badly hit by the staff crunch. A majority of the workers are from Bihar, Odisha and UP. Restaurants are selling only Biryani for takeaways and home delivery.

"Even if the government allows us to open (under tight norms) we would be unable to run the business due to shortage of labour force," said Syed Ali Raza, Owner of Lucky Hotel located in Nagole.

Speaking to The Hans India, Ali Raza said that his chain of hotels employed around 200 work force in about 150 restaurants across the city. After the mass migration of labourers to UP, Bihar and other states, not more than a dozen members were working in each hotel.

"With no workers in hotels some of them remained close and those which are opened are selling only Biryani prepared by local chefs", he added.

"The hotel business was most affected during this pandemic crisis. A month before the lockdown was announced on March 23, the rumours to avoid chicken had pushed the business into losses," he added.

Besides engaging workers from UP and Bihar, he employed Odisha chefs who cooked Chinese and Continental dishes like noodles, while Moghlai and Indian dishes were cooked by local chefs.

The owner of Dewaan group of hotels at Red Hills, Shaik Mahboob said that earlier they used to prepare around 25-30 handis of Biryani (both mutton and chicken) and now they were preparing only 5-6 handis. "In such situation, we neither can bear the expenses nor pay rents," he said.

While some of the small hotel owners said that they were selling only tea and snacks for takeaways, as their business mostly runs by tea with seating arrangement.

"We are also avoiding making dishes like Bagara Khana, noodles, Puri etc," said Mohammed Khaja at Old City," said Mohammed Khaja at Old City.