Wedding hall owners have rejected the National Command and Operation Centre's (NCOC) decision of banning indoor weddings, saying that they could not shut down their venues as they had collected advance payments for bookings. Addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Saturday, Marriage Hall Owners Association president Rana Raees and others claimed that Federal Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Minister Asad Umar was acting against the policies of Prime Minister Imran Khan, who had opposed the closure of businesses. The wedding hall owners stated that they had just started to recover from the losses they had incurred during the lockdown imposed by the government in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak in March. they questioned, further complaining that the government had not offered them any sort of relief either. The wedding hall owners further appealed to the PM, the Chief Justice of Pakistan and Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah to save them from an impending economic crisis.

Source: The Express Tribune November 15, 2020 06:33 UTC