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Frontal assault
It is welcome to learn that both the Hotel
Suisse and the Topaz/Tourmaline are being refurbished. Good. Tells us that
things are being really streamlined. But there seems to be something rather
fishy in Kandy's hotel scene. As anyone in the hotel industry will tell
you, the confidence, dependability and reliability of a hotel are only
as good as its Front Office. It is here that, that all-important first
impression counts for so much in our comfort services.
One Front Office however seems to wallow in taking those time-honoured
three steps backwards. The upshot? Thefts, heavy larceny, all manner of
skullduggery, employees hauled into the police station, one at least remanded,
while in the Front Office the nabobs keep staggering around wondering how
it all could be their fault. No hotel would like to admit that it is a
haven for thieves, but the thieves have had a field day of late. People
still question the sanity of keeping large sums of money in a little Front
Office safe and are equally shocked to learn that this safe had been surreptitiously
opened and about Rs. 300,000 taken away. Nobody wishes to admit to a basic
weakness in the system that had given the safe rifler or riflers licence
and opportunity.
Even as the police moved in and staff were taken in for questioning,
an expensive camera, property of a guest, also disappeared. All this has
encouraged certain persons to "finger" those they disliked, resulting
in even those who were not on duty on the day/night of the thefts, being
hauled into the police station and forced to spend as many as five hours
there. Such a to-do and all because the Front Office is certainly not what
it is cut out to be. This ridiculous sham has made the hotel suffer both
in prestige and reputation, more so when "keys" had been used
to open the safe and no one can give a sensible explanation. What is also
intriguing is that the money was subsequently "found", tucked
away in a bag in the premises of the hotel!
The season begins soon and hotels in Kandy like to be recognised as
hotels. Not Thieves' Kitchens!
High-rise car park
A drive-in high-rise to accommodate 250
cars is coming up behind Walker's, Kandy. This, it is said, will ease the
parking problem in the city but many think the effect will be minimal.
Parking in the city is chaotic and the chaos is fuelled by the Municipality's
"parking girls" who are apparently in cahoots with many traders
and shopkeepers, especially on Colombo Street. It has now become the practice
of these traders to block all entry of vehicles outside their shops by
the posting of trolleys, oil drums and packing cases so that no vehicle
can park, save those that do business with the shopkeeper. Even the traffic
police turn a blind eye and as for the parking girls... they just tell
drivers to find some other place.
A pappadam post
Motorists like it very much. At the Tennekumbura
bridge junction, one road goes to Haragama across the river and the other
to Digana. Also across the river, is a police post. A policeman sits inside
this specially erected post — a post provided by the manufacturers of Elephant
Pappadams. The usual barricades are there, but everybody enjoys the sight
of this post. It is neatly built, and there is a corrugated roof and corrugated
strips on three sides too, all painted black. And on the three sides, in
broad yellow letters: Courtesy of Elephant Pappadams.
Nice touch that. A pappadam post. Takes the tedium out of travel. But
seriously, though, a regular user of this road asks why these police posts
are also not given the extension of an angled roof that covers at least
a foot-and-a-half of the road. "It rains a lot here," he said,
"and the policemen in the posts never come out to check vehicles when
it's raining. I have travelled this road daily and am never stopped when
it's raining hard. Now if I were a Tiger, I will certainly wait for a rainy
day to drive through with my bombs." Now that's a thought the police
would do well to take seriously.
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