KOCHI: Listen! Either you stop levying a cess on our behalf or use the Rs 650 crore corpus fund collected as cess for rehabilitation, Johny, a former bar worker, tells the government.
As the liquor ban in the state is being adored and abhorred in equal measure, away from the polemic, Johny, 40, an Arattupuzha native, is wallowing in despair. And rightly so. The only government relief that came his way hitherto was Rs 15,000, that too in two instalments.
“I spent my youthful 20 years waiting tables in bars and now I am running from pillar to post to eke out a living,” he says. His lifeline was severed when the government shut down bar hotels as part of its liquor policy on April 1, 2014.
Johny was the sole bread winner of the family of five, including his mother and two little kids. Today, he is straddling odd jobs to keep the home fires burning. He is not an anomaly. Rather, he is among the 5,851 displaced bar employees who are wistfully waiting for a rehab package that never came.
The government had imposed 5 per cent cess on liquor sales from October 2014, for the welfare of displaced bar workers. Allegations are rife that the corpus fund of Rs 650 crores (collected as on December 30, 2016) never trickled down to the workers.
Kunjumon of Alappuzha worked as a manager at a bar for 27 years before being chucked out following the ban. Today, at the age of 50, he is fighting a hard battle to make ends meet. “I had approached the government and requested to provide us relief from the corpus fund, in vain,” Kunjumon says.
In a report, Malathy, S, Additional Secretary, Taxes Department, says the government was aware of the fact that the change of policy had cost many bar employees their jobs. The government formulated a plan- ‘Punarjani-2030’- for rehabilitating the retrenched bar employees and imposed 5 per cent cess on liquor sold through Bevco.