Morocco’s Café and Restaurant Owners Threaten Protests Over Lack of Government Dialogue

The café and restaurant owners have expressed their willingness to discuss with the minister the various problems they are facing and to make proposals to mitigate the negative effects of the coronavirus on their sector, reports Al Massae. However, Mr. Amekraz seems impervious to any dialogue and any proposal.

In a letter, the National Association of Café and Restaurant Owners says it has called on Mr. Amekraz to find immediate solutions to save the sector from the crisis it is going through. Stressing that this corporation has thousands of employees who are suffering from unemployment due to the restrictive measures taken by the government to fight the coronavirus, it deplores the lack of concrete measures to mitigate the repercussions of the pandemic on café and restaurant owners.

Faced with this situation, the association threatens to organize intense protest movements to defend the interests of its members and respond to the marginalization of this sector by the government and the economic monitoring committee. Noureddine El Harrak, president of the association, is saddened by the fact that the Minister of Employment has not responded to his multiple letters to save this sector from bankruptcy.

He noted that the legal arsenal of this profession suffers from dysfunctions that exclude employees from the health and social protection system. In addition, certain regulations make the profession vulnerable to the law, the administration and society, added Mr. El Harrak. According to him, the Ministry of Employment does not have a diagnostic study of the sector. Hence the importance of a dialogue between the association and Mr. Amekraz.