Endless wait for SMEs at Stephen Court to resume business

Even after a month of the mishap at the Stephen Court building in Kolkata, which left several people dead and many injured, small businesses housed in that building have still not been allowed to open their units. Many of them are waiting for the green signal from the administrative departments to restart their operations.

"It's been a month since the massive fire outage at the iconic building in Park Street, compelling many of the popular restaurants like ours to pull down shutters for an indefinite period. However, it is taking longer than anticipated for officials to complete the clearance formalities and inspection responsibilities. We feel unnerved as we would like to resume operations but are not being allowed to do so," said Walter D'Silva, owner of Silver Grill, which is one of the most popular restaurants housed in the ground floor of Stephen Court.

Besides popular eateries such as Peter Cat and One Step-Up, Stephen Court is the address of the iconic 100-year-old confectionery house Flurys, Music World and several other SMEs.

"We have incurred substantial loss due to the closure of our unit since the mishap. Moreover, temporary workers employed in small offices and eateries in the building are the worst-affected as they are left jobless now," said an officer employed in Wintech, a call centre, on condition of anonymity.

However, some of the small-scale offices in the Stephen Court building plan to resume operations by the first week of May and are therefore pressing the administrative officials to give them permission to do so by early next month.

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