PEOPLE working in the hospitality industry have also been affected by the Covid-19 disease and lockdown.
In particular, bartenders and waiters who rely on being paid as they work, have found themselves without shifts, money or recourse to UIF when restaurants and pubs were forced to close their doors.
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While some people in other industries are able to work from home and others are being paid without having to work, bartenders and waiters will find it impossible to do the same.
The waiters who work part-time and use their earnings as spending money, or for their travels and to support hobbies, can probably survive this pandemic as they have their families to fall back on.
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A lot of waiters, however, use their tips and hard-earned wages to help support themselves and families and can no longer pay their bills or buy food.
Here’s what the waiters and bartenders who find themselves struggling financially due to their places of work being closed had to say:
Byron: I’m running out of money for food, rent, cleaning items, washing detergents and petrol to go buy food. I also have to worry about paying my medical aid.
Nontsikelelo: So many of us are struggling financially, especially because we weren’t expected the lockdown to be this long. It’s also stressful that we don’t know when it will end. Some of us don’t use our earnings for personal use only, we support our families with it.
Christine: It’s been hard not making any money. I got students fees coming up and can’t afford it. Spoke to the college today and they manage to offer me an extension on my payment. I’m not able to pay next month’s rent either and have no more money for food or supplies. My parents managed to give us R200 a week for helping them out with work. Which has helped us out a lot. Financially we are in trouble and I can’t afford anything more. I was lucky enough to have had savings that got me this far.
Vanessa: I’m a single mother of two boys and it’s really hard that I cannot provide for them with no income for us waiters who only get paid when we work with no UIF or any other income. It has built a huge sacrifice because there is also rent and we are running out of food. Some of us cannot save because we have a lot of expenses and sometimes it’s just not enough maybe if we had known about the lockdown a in January I believe that we would of made a plan we are suffering it’s just that we are trying to be strong what the government doesn’t realise is that there are poor people out there and for them is getting worse everyday.They should go around look around the rural and squatter camps and see how bad it really is for them. I understand that we need to be safe because of covid-19 but we are suffering financially. I just feel the government should have some kind of income to donate to those who work but cannot claim for UIF.we didn’t choose to be in this position so there must be some kind of a solution.
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