Neighbours ostracize New Alipore bizman for putting up Covid warriors in guest house

Kolkata: A prominent businessman in the city who runs a popular speciality restaurant and several banquet halls, has been facing social ostracization for letting out his guest house in New Alipore to doctors of Bangur Hospital. After hosting them since the beginning of the outbreak, the businessman, who has requested anonymity, has now called it a day because his goodwill gesture has boomeranged.Locals have now stopped ordering food from the home delivery outlet he runs and have been speaking out against both the outlet and the guest house fearing infection.
The owner of the place has repeatedly tried to reason with the local residents, showing video recordings of the three-time sanitization routine being followed daily. He now fears that business will never pick up again if people of the locality behave so insensitively.
At the beginning of the lockdown, when the KMC was desperately looking for additional accommodation to house doctors and nurses of Covid hospitals, this businessman had offered his guest house. It has 11 rooms and they were soon filled up with doctors who were attending to Covid patients at Bangur Hospital. A sanitization regimen was sent to the guest house by the KMC, which was strictly followed thrice a day. However, the local people soon started speaking out against the guest house, saying that it would spread infection in the community. This publicity started influencing customers who would place orders at the food outlet, making them fear that the food was infected.
“We had bulk orders being repeatedly cancelled due to this. We started taking videos of the sanitization routine and posting them. We also said that the food joint is in no way connected with the guest house. But nothing worked,” rued the businessman.
Local people allegedly even masqueraded as customers and reportedly spoke to the manager of the guest house in order to snoop around and spread propaganda. Eventually, the owner of the guest house wrote to the KMC, appealing that the building be removed from the list of those hosting doctors because he was desperate to get back to business. Keeping doctors on the premises would add to the stigma and will act as a barrier, he said. He also feared that this stigma might affect the reputation of his other business premises, which, in any case, are going through an extremely rough patch.
“The KMC has let us go and we are sanitizing every day. But it will be a long time before we can win back the confidence from the community and can host our corporate guests with pride. There is no question of spreading any infection from our guest house or food outlet, but, perhaps, only time will make the locality see reason. At a time like this, sensitisation of the community is imperative. Otherwise, people like me will never come out to help in this war,” he added.