By Barnie Choudhury
SOUTH ASIANS have been “completely forgotten” and not been given enough support by the government during the pandemic, according to the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, imposed the highest tier of restrictions on the area that the former Labour health secretary leads, last Friday (23).
Talks broke down between the mayor and ministers over how much money Greater Manchester should get in aid.
Talking exclusively to Eastern Eye, Burnham said, “I speak to people from within the Bangladeshi community, Indian community, Pakistani community, all the time, and we have a close dialogue. The areas with the highest number of cases, have not had the support that they need.
“That's why this this argument with the government was so important. It was an argument about fairness, recognising the places that have been hardest hit.”
He accused the government of “game playing” when it accused him of wanting a better deal than other regions facing the maximum pandemic measures. The Labour mayor said he was standing up for those who needed the most support.
“I never walked away from the negotiations, the government did. I know that there are many people within the Asian community in Greater Manchester who work within the taxi trade. They are often completely forgotten when politicians are talking about the help that they're going to provide.
“I was very conscious in speaking up directly for people who are self-employed, driving taxis. That message had to be heard by Westminster, because quite frankly, they neglect [them] way too often.”
Burnham said the reason for this neglect was down to politics being too London-centric.
“The government are running things from London, and they just aren't paying enough attention to what is happening on the ground, so I think they're neglecting all communities here.
“Take a place like Bolton. Overnight, a decision was taken to close hospitality without any proper support for the people affected by that decision. Now, the question I would ask is, would that have happened in London? Would that be acceptable there? Would that have been tried? But it was here.”
'You can't go to work because there is no work'
Shamsul Huda has been a cabbie in Manchester for more than 20 years. His main trade relies on trips to and from Manchester Airport, and since the lock down business has been all but non-existent.
“You can't go to work, because there is no work. I go to the airport, I have to wait, sometimes five hours, six hours before I get a job,” he told Eastern Eye. “Then you have to look at the overheads of that job. So, if a job is very local, then obviously you've not even covered your petrol and all the overheads of the car.”
The cabbie believes tier 3 measures 1will hit him badly once again, and he thinks the government has forgotten about people like him.
I feel there is more concentration on helping businesses,” said Huda. “I'm not against that, of course, I'm for that, everyone should be helped, but I think we are really hidden away. We are not being looked at. Taxi drivers are self-employed, and their living is really, really affected. We have families, we have to support our families, and I think we've not been helped at all.”
Ethnic minority businesses at risk
The need for support is echoed by Professor Monder Ram, director of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CREME) at Aston University in Birmingham.
His centre has recently undertaken what he describes as “the largest ever study of ethnic minority entrepreneurship”. It discovered that ethnic minorities contribute a conservative £25 billion to the UK economy.
Ram is also a member of the all-party parliamentary group on ethnic minority business.
“A number of our reports highlighted the particular vulnerabilities that ethnic minority business owners have,” he said. “Often, they don't get to hear about the kinds of support available, so they're missing out, and they do feel that their particular issues haven't been taken seriously.
“It's massively concerning, on the one hand, you have the considerable promotion of entrepreneurship as a vital part of government policy, as indispensable to the recovery. And then you have, on the other hand, heavily exposed ethnic minority entrepreneurs, not perhaps having the support that they want and deserve.”
The curry trade under pressure
Last week (23) the British Beer & Pub Association said the stricter measures in Greater Manchester would affect 1,900 pubs, 32,000 sector jobs and could total £664 million losses to the local economy.
Elsewhere, the hospitality trade has been badly hit.
Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in services such as restaurants, cafes, takeaways, pubs, clubs, canteens and catering, monthly growth went up by almost 70 per cent during August.
This was less than the near 120 per cent growth in July, when the food and beverage sector took advantage of the lifting of trading restrictions.
Even so, output in August was more than 11 per cent below that in February 2020.
That was due to the chancellor’s ‘eat out to help out scheme’, but the sector remains down 10 per cent when compared to pre-lock down February figures.
Shahab Uddin’s family has owned, but not always run, the Streetly Balti restaurant in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, for 27 years.
“I came back to the restaurant in 2018, I had to build it up again, and by February I could see light at the end of the tunnel,” he told Eastern Eye. “But then a few weeks later, the pandemic happened, and boom, everything just crashed.
“We had to close the restaurant down. We came back a few weeks later and opened it up for takeaways, but you need three or four takeaway orders to make up for one table of four for the income generated.”
When he eventually reopened, the restaurateur noticed that people were afraid to eat out. But in August the government scheme meant “things went mad” for a while, said Uddin.
By September things settled down before the government started to talk about its latest restrictions, and the restaurant owner predicted things would take a turn for the worse.
He was right, trade has dropped by 70 per cent compared to pre-lockdown.
“The problem with this is that two years ago, I had a clear plan of how I was going to pick it up again, right now, I don’t know what’s going on around me,” said Uddin. “I can’t plan, I can’t take a course of action which can build the business back up, because I don’t know what’s going on in the economy, in my surrounding area, I can’t tell at all.”
The blame lies squarely with the government, he said, because it has not properly addressed how to tackle the pandemic.
“I’m angry at the government for having all these resources and not figure out how to sort this thing out once and for all.
“Last night I returned home at midnight, but I couldn’t get to sleep until five in the morning. I was thinking I have to come into the restaurant today and have a staff meeting where I need to chop a couple of days off people.
“I don’t want to, and I have to think who can I drop? Who’s got a family to feed, who’s got an elderly parent they have to look after? All these things are going through my head, and I’m guessing there are plenty of people thinking the same thing.”
'The government schemes are of some help, but they simply don’t cover the decline in sales'
In the East Midlands in Leicester, Manjit Pabla and his brothers opened Friends Tandoori in September 2019.
Things were going well until the lock down in March, and today trade is down 60 per cent.
“Restaurant capacity is down because of the restrictions,” he told Eastern Eye. “We previously had 20 tables with 60 seats, now 10 tables, 30 seats. The other thing is the 10pm curfew, you can only do one sitting. If someone comes in at 6.30, that’s it, the table is gone for the night. Then you’ve got your rule of six, so big family groups, you can’t do that either.”
It means the heart breaking decision of cutting staff hours and his working double shifts.
“The government schemes are of some help, but they simply don’t cover the decline in sales,” said Pabla. “In the hospitality industry, call it an enhanced furlough scheme, we need more support. If there’s another lock down, or they say we need to shut or it’s just takeaways, staff don’t have a job to come in to. The government need to be looking after them.”
Like many Asian businesses, Pabla and his brothers are having to be innovative at their Leicester restaurant.
“Because of the curfew, we’re now doing a Sunday breakfast, the full English with a couple of Indian options. From next week, we’ll be opening from 11am to extend our hours with coffees, desserts and street food. You just have to adapt in that way.”
Asian businesses are key
That innovation is just what will help the UK economy, said Professor Ram.
“They're (Asians) more likely to innovate in terms of the product that they're producing and innovate in terms of the processes in virtually in every area in the UK. That's interesting because innovation and productivity are major staples of government policy at the moment. But again, we find the same problem where they ask, where’s my firm in that discourse? It’s nowhere to be seen.”
The Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham said that he makes no apology for speaking up for his communities.
As well as calling for greater support, Burnham also told Eastern Eye that he remained concerned that south Asians were not being looked after properly when it came to the test and trace system.
“It's a real kind of failure of what's going on this year,” he said. “People will look back at the test and trace decision, the decision to take it away from those trusted established teams in local communities and put it into this sort of outsourced operation.
“That will be seen in time as one of the major mistakes that has led to Britain being harder hit by this virus than other countries.”
The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government declined to comment.
