Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj on Friday attacked the BJP-ruled MCDs for opposing the Government decision to stop the health trade license of the hotels and restaurants.
Bhardwaj said that BJP-ruled MCD does not want to abolish license raj therefore, it wants to continue to give health trade licenses to restaurant owners. "Every restaurant owner in Delhi has to pay a bribe of one to five lakh rupees to an MCD officer for renewal of health trade license. Under the law made in 2011 all restaurants are registered under FSSAI and they are given five years license, yet MCD is harassing restaurant owners," he said.
The AAP leader also said that the BJP is not paying the salaries of the doctors; "The AAP government's revenue has doubled but in MCDs only the incomes of the councillors have increased in last five years," he said.
Bhardwaj said, “During the COVID-19 pandemic every state government is working towards giving some relaxations to every business sector. The target is to revive the business of every sector as due to the pandemic and lockdown the business sectors got highly affected," he said.
It may be noted that the government led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is working round the clock to help the business sectors. This week Kejriwal had a meeting with the restaurant associations of Delhi where he instructed that from now onwards no health trade license will be required. Kejriwal also met the mayors of three municipal corporations of Delhi and directed them the above matter.
The restaurants are required to renew health license certificate every year. Earlier the whole process used to happen manually but now it happens online, he said, adding that in reality, the MCD officials should come and visit the restaurant or hotel before giving the certificate but in Delhi, the municipal corporations take bribes from the hotels and restaurants to issue this order.