Over 3,500 restaurants, pastry shops submit reopening requests

AMMAN — The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has announced that more than 3,500 restaurants, food establishments and pastry shops in all the governorates have submitted reopening requests.

Via delivery.mota.jo, the official platform that the ministry has recently launched to receive reopening requests from the food sector during the current national lockdown, 559 establishments have submitted “complete requests”.

Specialised committees, formed by the ministries of Tourism, Health, Labour, Local Administration, as well as the Greater Amman Municipality and the Jordan Food and Drug Administration, have began field inspections of the 559 facilities that completed their requests.

The Tourism Ministry said in a statement that based on the inspections, 209 of the establishment fulfilled the entire set of conditions announced on the platform for the return of work.

Consequently, the 209 establishments were granted permission to resume business as of Sunday according to the announced health and procedural requirements.

Photos of fast-food chains sanitising their facilities have gone viral on social media, with thousands of citizens expressing their excitement for the reopening of their favourite restaurants.

“I really think that once restaurants reopen, this whole pandemic will seem a lot easier to handle. Comfort food is much needed, given that many of us are not great chefs,” said Amani Olaimi, a university student, in Twitter.

Citizens also started speculating which restaurants would go back to work.

“My favourite restaurant just updated their app… is this a sign?” asked a Twitter user with a pseudonym.

Several local restaurants have published advertisements on different social media platform to inform their customers that they will be back soon.

Home delivery services or takeaway are available from 8am until 6pm with the ministry stressing that preventive health conditions, such as social distancing, are essential in both cases.

Establishments that have fulfilled the conditions for resuming work are now authorised to start selling after they have received official letters from the authorities that have inspected them in the field.

The letters are required to be presented throughout future inspections, the ministry added.

As for workers in these restaurants, the Epidemiology Committee has announced that it is studying the gradual return of public transport as employees start going back to work.

“The government understands that many of these employees do not own cars and therefore a permit will not do them much good alone. They need their usual mode of transport back,” said Azmi Mahafzah, one of the committee’s members, in a recent television interview.