Sanaa restaurants .. Houthi front for looting in the time of Corona
English - Tuesday 14 July 2020 الساعة 04:59 pm
Sanaa, Newsyemen, Ahmed Fouad:
While the Houthi militia has recognized the obligation to obfuscate the scale of the pandemic, the degree of its spread and the number of victims as a general methodology for confronting the Coronavirus in its coup areas, other measures described as improvised and arbitrary, including closing restaurants.
Looted security and military patrols carrying armed Houthi elements are deployed in a number of populated and commercial neighborhoods, streets and markets of the capital Sana'a, and impose financial levies on restaurant owners, under allegations of breaching precautionary measures to confront the Coronavirus.
According to restaurant owners who spoke to Newsyemen, the amounts of money (royalties) that the Houthi militia imposed on these people ranged between 30-100 thousand riyals, despite their commitment to full precautionary measures, including complete and continuous sterilization of surfaces and doors and sidewalks of restaurants, wearing masks and gloves, and to ensure the social distancing between restaurant workers themselves and when serving the customers.
Costumers of restaurants in Sanaa sits in the sidewalks adjacent to these restaurants or in open transport vehicles for lunch on the public streets, exposing meals to the dangers of mixing with volatile soils, car exhausts and food waste left from earlier on the sidewalks.
And Abdulbaqi Dirham, a worker in a Sanaa restaurant, sees the possibility of organizing the seating inside the restaurant by allocating one seat to two separate seats on each table, considering that from a health standpoint, it is much better than crowding dozens on the sidewalks and car roofs.
In his speech to Newsyemen, Abdulbaqi complained about the Houthi militia's practice and successive blackmailing against them, and imposing illegal financial levies from time to time, "the last time we received a threat to close the restaurant at the height of the work", considering that the Corona epidemic has become a source of affiliation and wealth for elements working in the group's ranks.
While the doors of mosques and public markets were kept open, and it continued to organize rallying events within councils, halls and sectarian centers, the Houthi militia had approved last March what it said was a “total of precautionary measures to confront Corona, including the temporary closure of events halls, steam and traditional baths, shisha places, swimming pools, and public and private gardens.”
The militia announced obliging commercial malls and supermarkets to put sanitary sterilizers and spray tools at its entrances, as mandated by its name (inspection teams and field monitoring of the health of the environment) to go to the field to intensive restaurants to see the extent of their commitment to the instructions, and this has opened the door of Hourhi abuse and blackmail those working in this vital commercial sector
