João Gonçalves, in statements to the Lusa agency, said there is no movement of people, due to the state of emergency the country is experiencing, decreed as part of the prevention of the new coronavirus, which has focused on customer demand.
He stressed that a government document had reached the association, which stated the need to paralyse actions, with the exception of 'take away' services and home deliveries.
"Now what we see is that there are many losses, there are salaries to be paid, I believe that by now the executive should be addressing this. If you don't sell, you don't get any billing, and that has an impact not only on the workers, but also on the companies that supply a lot of products", he said.
The association leader hopes that this situation will be overcome as soon as possible, in the sense that there will be an increase in demand for hotel units.
Asked if there have been redundancies, João Gonçalves considered it "imprudent" at this time, pointing out that what is happening is that there is a decrease "which is harmful".
"But for moral reasons, I don't believe that any landlord sends the workers away. They are waiting for a better opportunity, but they are in an extremely difficult situation", he stressed.
João Gonçalves said that there is still no estimate of the losses, but it's enough to deduce from the daily turnover of a hotel or restaurant.
The president of Ahoresia stressed that some hotel units have been supporting the government's efforts to combat the covid-19 pandemic by making space available for institutional quarantines.
"It is also an escape for the hotels, which already before the covid-19 had a decrease in demand," he said, expressing hope that by April 2021 the situation will return to normal.
According to João Gonçalves, the proposal has not yet been presented to the executive, but soon the association should suggest, according to other realities, a support of about two thirds of people's wages.
"We need to have a consensus of ideas to be able to take and make known to our Government so that it can effectively do something in this sense, because otherwise it will be a pity, there are thousands of hotel units, not only those urban ones, we also have hotels of micro and small hotel companies at the level of the country and we must also safeguard them", he stressed.
Angola already has 24 positive cases of the new coronavirus, including 16 active cases, six recovered and two deaths.
