KOCHI: The Railway stations in the city wore a gloomy look, as most food outlets saw yet another day of dramatic slump in business. On the one hand, long-time vendors have been put out of work and on the other, food stalls are looking at heavy job cuts and in some cases, a complete shut-down even.The Ernakulam South Railway Station has 8 food outlets under the IRCTC. All of them have been seeing a fall of 50 per cent or more over the last week. “Just look around this hotel, you will know how much we are hit,” says the manager of a hotel on platform 1 of South Railway Station. He points at a dining hall which is near empty at 2 pm. “Most of our business happens through the vendors. We had 8 of them. All of them have been removed. The business is down by 50 per cent. Only passengers whose coaches halt near the hotel will come down and buy from us. No one is going to walk the distance of three-four coaches when most trains don’t stop for more than a couple of minutes. If this continues, we will have to shut shop,” says the manager.But food outlets on Platform 1 are still better off compared to the rest, as many trains at least stop here. The worst hit are hotels on others platforms, whose passenger traffic has now reduced to a trickle. “We did our calculations based on the business we could generate through vendors who can sell on all platforms. But now we can only look at trains on this platform. On certain days, the trains are very few and many do not stop at all. So there is no business happening. We have already paid the rent at the beginning of the month. It’s a complete loss for us now,” says a vendor on platform number three of the station.
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