Madurai hotel staff wear badges to drive home importance of voting

MADURAI: While the district administration officials are busy organizing several awareness programmes to achieve 100% polling in the upcoming Parliamentary elections, the employees of a hotel in the city are also sensitizing people about the importance of voting by wearing badges encouraging people to vote. All the employees at the Temple City hotel can be seen wearing badges, which reads ‘Vakkalipadhu Namadhu Kadamai’ (Vote is our Right) to create awareness among the people.As the hotel is situated at a prime location opposite to the MGR Bus Stand at Mattuthavani, hundreds of customers visit the hotel every day.
An employee D Kannan, who stands in front of the entrance of the hotel to welcome the customers, is also briefly explaining to the customers about the importance of voting on their way in and way out of the hotel.
Kannan told TOI that his job at the hotel is to welcome the customers on their way in and to thank the customers for their visit on their way out of the hotel. “Apart from welcoming the people to the hotel, I used to speak to them for a few minutes appealing them to compulsorily cast their votes during the election as it is our democratic duty,” he explained.
Speaking to TOI, the managing director of Temple City Group of Hotels, K L Kumaar said that recently the district administration officials organized a meeting regarding election awareness. He said that when the officials appealed the members of different associations to contribute in creating awareness regarding elections, he came up with the idea of putting up small posters above the wash basins at all the hotels and to print the slogan Voting is our Right’ below the bills.
Kumaar, who is also president of the Madurai District Hotels Association said, “In order to set an example, I came up with the idea of distributing badges to the employees in all the 12 hotel branches that we own.”
He noted that there has been a good response from people for this initiative. “Apart from this initiative, we are also planning to give 10% discount to the people in all our branches on April 18 for all the customers when they show their ink mark on their fingers after casting their votes,” he added.