On Tuesday evening, the city hall in Eindhoven shall turn bright red as the spotlights are switched on.
With this action, the events industry wants to show their protest. According to them, the relaxation of anti-corona measures are not enough for their industry.
On Tuesday, throughout the country, the government buildings will lit up in red light from nine o’clock in the evening. With this action, the companies in the events sector hope that in addition to personnel costs, other fixed costs will also be covered by the government. Otherwise they won’t be able to keep the businesses running for long.
Buildings in red
In Den Bosch, the town hall will glow in red light. In Eindhoven, the light and sound company Hoevenaars will carry it out. This company has been almost completely at a standstill for the past six months. Hoevenaars: “In this situation, we can only make it for two months at most.”
In a normal year, the Nuenen based company works with twenty permanent employees behind the scenes at major events such as hip-hop festival WooHaa, Dutch Design Week and King’s Day in Eindhoven. “None of that took place this time. Now we only have a few small assignments, such as lighting a terrace,” says Stephan Bout van Hoevenaars.
According to Bout, there’s not much relaxation in events industry. The corona policy allows allows only a hundred people to come together. Because of relatively less visitors, organisers are cancelling the events. There’re no company parties either.
A new technology
The Veldhoven company developed a technology to sustain themselves in this period. The system counts the number of visitors in a room using sensors. Disappointingly enough, the new technology has had little effect so far. Hoevenaars couldn’t sell the system to the shopkeepers, as there is little interest in it. “The government has never indicated that they are going to strictly monitor the number of visitors. As a result, shop owners saw no need for our system to count visitors”.
Source: omroepbrabant.nl
translation: Chaitali Sengupta, who gives ONLINE Inburgering classes.
