A shortage of trained chefs is looming in the Netherlands’ Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian restaurants because of strict new rules for work permits, the Volkskrant reports.

The Dutch job centre organisation UWV wants to train up local unemployed people to do the work, but so far only 30 have been successful.

In addition, work permits for people from outside the EU are now only granted for one year, and on the condition there is no-one in either the Netherlands or the EU who can do the job.

Return

This year, some 800 to 1,000 chefs from Asia will have to return home because their work permits are not being renewed, estimates the Dutch hospitality industry association Horeca Nederland.

The association says some 40% of the country’s 2,500 Asian restaurants are likely to feel the impact and 500 will end up in ‘acute’ trouble.

‘We have 1,000 cooks on our books who have sufficient education and experience to work in an Asian restaurant,’ UWV spokeswoman Liesbeth van Amersfoort told the Volkskrant.

The UWV has been told by an outside agency that it takes three to 12 months to train a qualified chef to specialise in Chinese wok cooking, the Volkskrant says.

Stars

However, Frank Chan of the Dutch Chinese restaurants’ associatio, said these people are not suitable. ‘There is no training in the Netherlands to become a Chinese chef. That is why we bring our chefs in from China,’ he said.

A spokesman for Horeca Nederland said the UWV is underestimating the skills needed to work in an Asian restaurant. ‘The Okura hotel in Amsterdam has a Japanese restaurant with a Michelin star and they need specialised Japanese chefs,’ he said.

D66 parliamentarian Steven van Weyenberg has asked social affairs minister Lodewijk Asscher to intervene.