By Our Reporter The business community hit hard by the extended lockdown has proposed to have the salary of the workers for the lockdown period and called for a tripartite dialogue among the government, labourers and entrepreneurs to work on the idea. The businesspersons should be allowed to pay maximum 50 per cent of the existing salary to the workers, President of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) Bhawani Rana said in a press meet conducted online on Monday. "The Labour Act, 2018 also has a provision that in difficult situation industries can keep the workers in reserve and can pay half of their regular salary so we should be allowed to implement the provision in the lockdown," she said. She stated that the industries, institution and commodity associations should be allowed to have mutual discussion with the labourers and trade unions in their respective areas and decide about the pay-cut. She also said that if the lockdown continued for longer period, the businesses would be unable to pay the salary. The FNCCI has also asked to cancel the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) at the institutional level for at least a year till April 2021. It also asked the government to formulate a special law to allow the companies to send off the workers with the minimum payment if they wanted to reduce the size or capacity of the establishment. Expressing its dissatisfaction over the exclusion of its suggestions from the government's Policy and Programmes for fiscal year 2020/21, it demanded the issues to be addressed in the budget of the next fiscal. Indicating to the uncertainty of the lockdown period, the business body has urged to make moves gradually to open business and industry. About one fourth industries, including medicine and food items, are in operation in the lockdown but they are operating only 40 per cent of their capacity. The business body is also unhappy with the government for not declaring relief packages for the affected industrialists. The effect of lockdown has been so harsh that t hoteliers of Pokhara have said they would be able to resume their business halted by COVID-19 pandemic before mid-October. According to Western Regional Hotel Association Pokhara hotels cannot be opened before mid-October as operating business as per the WHO standards is impossible in the present condition. It is said that it required one to two years for the hotel industry to be normal from the current crisis. As a result, a large number of workers working in tourism city of Pokhara would lose their jobs for long. Tourism entrepreneur Naresh Bhattarai said that big hotels of Pokhara, including Hotel Grand, Fishtail, Barahi, Temple Tree and Landmark were providing employment to only 15 per cent of their staff during the lockdown. All other staff members have been sent to their home as per the no-work-no-pay policy, he said, adding that there was no other alternative to them when their turnover fell to almost zero.