THE Asian restaurant business in Greater Manchester will be hit hard by new harsh restrictions on recruiting workers from the Indian sub-continent an industry leader has warned.
Guild of Bangladeshi Restaurateurs President Enam Ali predicted a decline in the culture of Asian food which has dominated the eating-out industry in the north west for 20 years.
He warned the new system, unveiled by Home Secretary Charles Clarke, would mean restaurant closures along Manchester Curry Mile and elsewhere in Greater Manchester because they will not be able to recruit the 1,000 workers a year they need to keep in business.
Said Mr Ali: "We have built up this industry to what it is today and want to preserve it for future generations of workers and diners. This new system jeopardises all this. The Home Office have simply not listened to our concerns in drawing up this legislation."
He was referring to a new point system for recruiting workers from overseas on work permits. This virtually shuts the door on recruiting workers from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Mr Clarke had decided the special sector based schemes which allowed recruitment from the Indian sub-continent into the catering and hospitality industry would not be revived. He has ruled that recruitment of low skilled workers by UK business should in future be from European Union countries, mainly from east Europe.
Mr Ali and other spokesmen for the Asian restaurant sector, which employs 80,000 people nationally, have pointed out that it is almost impossible to recruit none-south Asian Labour to cook, serve or work in the kitchens of curry restaurants.
"I have met with the Home Office Minister Tony McNulty several times and expressed my concerns but he had not listened.
"Mr Clarke talks about the point system controlling illegal immigration but what have we got to do with illegal labour. We want to recruit chiefs and kitchen workers on genuine work permits who will come over here pay their taxes and contribute to a thriving and legitimate catering industry and we are being prevented from doing so by this points system," said Mr Ali.
"This will hit places like the Curry Mile and Manchester Chinatown very hard. Time will tell, but I predict many closures of restaurants and takeaways because they can't get the workers," he added.
But a Home Office claimed skilled chefs from south Asia would be allowed to come to the UK on work permits.
He said: "We understand that skilled chefs in parts of the catering trade may need to be from a particular cultural or ethnic background.
"Where there is a demonstrable shortage we will continue to issue work permits as before to skilled workers, subject to those individuals meeting the points criteria. The Skills Advisory Body will advise on shortage areas.
"On the other hand, we do not accept that unskilled auxiliary restaurant workers require the same skills. Domestic or EU workers should be able to fill these posts. We would not wish to create a situation whereby a sector is entirely dependent for its viability on a supply of migrant labour."

Clarke points the way into UK

WORK permit entrants to the UK will be decided on a points system. Points will be awarded on what the Government White Paper, 'Making Migration Work for Britain', calls "objective and transparent" criteria, like the possession of a degree or a world-recognised professional qualification.
Potential work permit applicants are divided into five tiers.

Tier 1 includes businessmen, scientists and top doctors. They do not need a job offer and can come with their families and may be allowed to settle permanently in Britain after two years. The pass mark is 75 points, with 30 points for a degrees and 50 points PhD and 20 points for being under 27.
Individuals coming in to set up business and innovators who have substantial funds to spend in the UK will not even need points to get in.

Tier 2 applies to medium and highly skilled workers who apply for jobs in "shortage occupations" that cannot be filled by UK or European Union workers. They can bring their families but will only be considered for settlement after five years.

Tier 3 is the level which covers low skilled workers who have traditionally applied for jobs in the hospitality and catering industry or for seasonal agricultural work Only applicants from EU countries are allowed in this category and application will accepted in limited numbers dependent on quotas. They must be company-led and will be time limited. Families will not be allowed in and migrants will not be allowed to settle.
The government may introduce guarantee fees that migrants will only get back if they stick to the rules. Open return tickets are also being considered to ensure return after 12 months. Employers will be responsible for making sure the rules are obeyed.

Other tiers include students, au pairs, religious workers, sports people in competition who will have to prove they are on genuine courses or involved in genuine activities.

The one glimmer of hope the Home Office offers to a future relaxation of the rules to allow in some limited low skill migrants from the Indian sub-continent comes is a passage in the White Paper which states: "Only where there is an identified shortage which cannot be met from within the UK or EU will a scheme under Tier 3 be set up". This could mean that if the Asian restaurant/hospitality industry can prove it simply cannot recruit UK or EU nationals to work in it, and that it is desperately short of labour, there may be some relaxation on the ban on low skilled labour from Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other Asian countries.