Cameron lobbied to grant short term work visas

Curry cooks warn that skill shortage
puts restaurants at risk

Enam Ali, who founded the British Curry Awards 10 years ago, has announced that he is working on a dossier to send to the British Government begging them to introduce short term work visas. Ali sees this as the only way to deal with the dire shortage of skilled cooks which “Indian” restaurants and takeaways are experiencing – which has become so bad that some businesses may be forced to close.

Short term work visas would allow restaurant owners to bring chefs and experienced kitchen staff to the UK to work for fixed periods. This is seen as the only way that food outlets can keep up the standard of the Indian subcontinent food that they serve. It is estimated that up to 90% of restaurants are suffering from the skills shortage.

The skills shortage could be bad news for the UK economy. It is estimated that the Indian sector of the restaurant industry brings in over £4 billion per year – employing over 100,000 people to achieve this. Going to an “Indian restaurant” is often the main way people from other cultures encounter Asian people, so small community restaurants have an important role to play in community relations. Indian food also has a number of health benefits, with chillis said to improve the mood as well as contributing essential nutrients to the diet. Finally: a good Indian-style meal is just plain delicious and makes you feel like you’ve had a good night out – what’s not to like?

It’s not good enough to assume that the industry will just muddle through: who would have thought, for example, that the UK would see such a huge decline in the number of public houses (pubs) as has taken place over the last decade? That has had a negative effect on many rural and urban areas. The skills shortage in Asian outlets needs to be tackled now.

Ali plans to send his dossier to Cabinet Members including Home Secretary Theresa May and House of Commons Leader Chris Grayling. It won’t stop there, though: the document will also be sent to the Prime Minister.

It won’t be the first time David Cameron has been made aware of the skills shortage in the curry industry. At the 2013 British Curry Awards, David Cameron spoke of the problems facing the industry. He recognised that strict immigration rules can cause problems for restaurants trying to employ experienced staff and promised to intervene to solve the problems. He told restaurants he wanted to help them to “get the skilled Asian chefs you need”.

The skills shortage appears to have two main causes. First, it takes up to three years for a chef to gain basic competence in the range of Indian cookery. Second, there is no new supply of chefs coming through in the UK. Young people with an Asian background seem to be looking to traditional UK sectors of the economy for employment and new global industries such as IT. They may take short term jobs in Indian restaurants to help see them through college, but they are not returning to make careers in the industry.

Asking for short-term visas is a politically charged way out of the crisis – but it’s a potential problem that can be solved if tackled head-on, with politicians calmly explaining why it is a way forward. Other countries have short term work visa schemes to deal with their own problems or exceptional circumstances, and there is no reason why the UK cannot go down this route. Everyone benefits from a buoyant local economy.

A number of restaurant owners have rallied round to back Enam Ali’s initiative.

Shabir Mughal, owner of the award-winning Spicy Mint in the Curry Mile district of Rusholme, Manchester, said: “It’s a full-blown crisis. Indian and Pakistani restaurants across the country are in the same situation. The visa criteria make it impossible to bring in the right people. Take poppadoms. People take them for granted, but there is a technique that has to be learned. Every recipe is different and involves special skills.”

Mahtab Miah, owner of Vujon, in Newcastle, said that the problem had emerged only in the past five years, but was “getting worse and worse every day”.

Moula Miah owns three restaurants in Birmingham. In the past two years he has closed two others because of the struggle to find staff. Potentially skilful Eastern European migrants, he said, would “rather work in a coffee shop”.

Let’s hope the campaign succeeds!

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