Hyderabad, Aug 30: A Swedish furniture giant, IKEA in Hyderabad was accused of alleged racism against a customer from Manipur at its store. Nitin Sethi, a customer at the store on Sunday tweeted “Racist treatment at IKEA store here. Only my wife from Manipur got frisked for goods she bought. No one else before us. And then all the supervisory staff came to defend the racism. Great show from an international store. Cheers to another usual day”. Responding to the alleged racist treat- ment at the IKEA store in the city, Telangana Industries Minister K T Rama Rao on Twitter said “ This is appalling and absolutely unacceptable @IKEAIndia.
”Please ensure a proper apology is issued and more importantly educate, sensitize & train your staff to respect all your customers graciously, he said. Hope you will make amends asap, the Minister added. Responding to the customer tweet, IKEA on Twitter said ”we believe that equality is a human right, and we condemn all forms of racism and prejudice. We regret the inconvenience caused to you while following the mandatory billing protocol. As a process, customers, who self-check are requested for a final check before leaving the store to ensure the billing is correct and customers do not face any problems regarding double charging, or repeat scanning of products, the furniture giant said.
