Owners demand reopening of wedding halls

Wedding hall owners, following a meeting on Sunday, joined by the representatives of the Marriage Hall Association (MHA), have given a call for nation-wide protests if the restrictions on them resuming business remain in place.

The meeting discussed reopening wedding halls and agreed that if their request remained unmet, wedding hall owners across the country would stage demonstrations from July 13. The participants also consented to widening the protests later, if relevant authorities remained unmoved.

Confirming this development, MHA president Rana Raees said that rallies would be carried out across the country, with wedding hall owners marching towards press clubs in different cities if they were not allowed to resume business.

He noted that that wedding halls owners and the MHA had been persistently requesting the authorities to allow them to resume business but little was done to address their issues and concerns.

"If the situation remains so, we have decided to protest peacefully across the country, demanding the removal of restrictions on wedding halls," said Raees, appealing to all wedding hall owners to observe pandemic-related standard operating procedures during the demonstrations.