East Europeans cook Indian cuisine in UK
by Mike Lockey

        London: As is well-known, Indian food is a passion in Britain and the Indian restaurant industry needs some 20,000 workers a year. You would expect, would you not, that those workers would come from South Asian origins? But, thanks to the vagaries of European Community rules, this may no longer be the case. Because, since several Eastern European countries joined the European Union recently, their nationals have the right to work in Britain. What this seems to mean is that the government can require Indian restaurant owners to recruit from this new East European workforce instead of from the Indian subcontinent. Now, there may well be a sound principle behind this apparent idiocy, but it is hard to see what that principle is. As Ashraf Uddin, secretary general of the Bangladesh Caterers' Association pointed out: "Unless these people know our culture, our language, our way of working, it's a complete mess". And Enan Ali, chair of the Bangladesh Guild of Restaurants (and a high proportion of so-called Indian restaurants in Britain are, in fact, Bangladeshi), told Britain's Asian Times newspaper: "It just won't work. Eastern Europeans don't know about Indian food and spices. Also, most of our kitchen staff only speak Asian languages. How would someone from Europe communicate with them? It would be chaos".

      Restaurant owners themselves, not unnaturally, are worried about what the new rules will mean to them. And there is not much time to get them changed, as they are soon to be debated in the House of Lords as part of the bill enshrining them in British law, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill. As Usman Ali, owner of a leading restaurant said: "Staff who come from India and Bangladesh are invaluable for trade here. They bring with them a wealth of experience and knowledge of how to cook curries to perfection. We have four staff from India and between them they have more than twenty years experience in the restaurant trade". Now, a Labour MP, Keith Vaz, has joined the debate. He represents the Hindu heartland of Leicester East and has asked the government to reconsider the Bill and insert a clause favourable to South Asian workers. As he told the Eastern Eye newspaper: "I fully support the campaign to provide an exception in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill for Asian restaurants to recruit from outside Europe. Britain is lucky to have the best Asian restaurants in the world and we cannot allow the Bill to endanger this". Only time will tell whether intransigence or pragmatism will win this particular battle.
-Mar 4, 2006