After nearly two months after curfew began at 22 hours, this Monday, undersecretary of crime prevention, Katherine Martorell, announced a major modification of this measure which “from this Thursday 25th, will begin at 23:00 and end at 5:00 a.m. across the national territory.
Tourism guilds, who had been talking to the government for some time about reducing curfew hours, labelled this change very positive for the sector.
Máximo Picallo, president of the Chilean Gastronomy Association in Chile (Achiga), noted that “this has a positive effect, since it allows to extend in something the dinner service, which is very important for restaurants”.
In addition, it emphasized that as an industry they valued that the start of the curfew and the efforts made by the Ministry of the Economy had been shortened by one hour. “The only way to reactivate and stand as a sector is to operate more normally. To do this, the food industry has shown that it has all the sanitary measures and protocols to provide a safe experience for our customers,” he concluded.
For her part, Helen Kouyoumdjian, executive vice president of the Federation of Tourism Companies of Chile (Fedetur), indicated that this modification “will contribute to the gastronomic industry starting to normalize its operation in some way, since, with the current schedule of the measure, they have to close the kitchens very early on the night shift”.
In this line he called for “further progress in further reducing curfew” so that restaurants can be open longer and increase their revenue by initiating reactivation.
Changing the schedule on public transport
From Achiga, they indicated that it is essential that this measure be accompanied by an extension of the Metro’s operating hours, up to at least 22 hours. This would “facilitate the transfer of workers to their homes, so that they arrive before the start of curfew,” Picallo said.
Thus, on Tuesday, the Ministry of Transport unveiled the new operating hours of transport in the Metropolitan Region. Among the changes, the Metro will operate between 6:00 and 22:00 from Monday to Friday, between 07:00 and 22:00 on Saturdays and between 8:00 and 22:00 on Sundays.
The public bus network, on the other hand, will run from 5:30 to 23:00 hours from Monday to Sunday.
It should be noted that tourism, restaurants and bars have been one of the great ones affected not only by the pandemic, but by the social outburst in October 2019. After several months closed, the guilds are currently seeking to begin their economic revival and for the Government to continue to take steps to support the decline of the crisis currently in place.
