PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Bar own­ers are now con­cerned about their abil­i­ty to pay gam­ing tax­es fol­low­ing the re­duc­tion of op­er­at­ing hours at their es­tab­lish­ments by the gov­ern­ment.

Mem­bers of the Bar Own­ers & Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion Trinidad & To­ba­go raised the is­sue as they gath­ered in front of White­hall, chant­i­ng “Bar Lives Mat­ter too” yes­ter­day.

“We have been closed for over three months with no in­come com­ing in­to our es­tab­lish­ments. How is it fair for us to pay an en­tire tax­a­tion? That’s not fair at all. And these are some of the top­ics that we are ask­ing that the gov­ern­ment come to us and cre­ate some form of di­a­logue so we could come to an arrange­ment per­tain­ing to these things,” said vice-pres­i­dent of BOATT, Satesh Moonasar.

“It is un­fair to be pay­ing a year’s tax when it have three months out of the year you have no busi­ness.”

Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion Teron Mo­han said the re­duc­tion placed ad­di­tion­al strain on the al­ready reel­ing mem­ber­ship, as the two hours that were cut from 8 pm to 10 pm, of­ten served as prime busi­ness hours for bars.

“Some peo­ple not even mak­ing enough mon­ey to cov­er the day’s op­er­a­tion. I would say as much as any­where as 50 per cent to 75 per cent loss­es on a dai­ly ba­sis.

That two hours there is re­al­ly prime time hours for any bar to re­al­ly make its best trade. So the lash just get­ting hard­er and more se­vere and the per­sons who dis­re­gard­ed the guide­lines in the first place well I mean it was a restau­rant that kin­da spear­head­ed the whole thing and they got all the at­ten­tion and they op­er­at­ing very freely, right up to their 10 o’clock mark­er.”

The bars had their op­er­at­ing hours re­duced on June 29 to 8 am to 8 pm, just one week af­ter they were al­lowed to re­sume busi­ness in the wake of COVID-19 re­stric­tions. The re­stric­tions on bars were an­nounced af­ter sev­er­al videos of crowds gath­er­ing in­side and out­side of bars flaunt­ing pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions while oth­er bars used the am­bigu­ous open­ing time frame to open at mid­night.

How­ev­er, bars that op­er­ate un­der a restau­rant li­cense were al­lowed to open un­til 10 pm.

“It’s very un­fair to have part of the in­dus­try func­tion­ing un­til ten and part of the in­dus­try func­tion­ing un­til eight. It is very un­fair be­cause based on your li­cense, there is dif­fer­ent lock-off times for li­cense. For restau­rant and spe­cial restau­rants, you are al­lowed to go till 10, based on the health or­di­nance and it is very un­fair that the Spir­it Re­tail­ers Li­cense have to close at 8 o’clock. What’s the dif­fer­ence be­tween eight and ten and you func­tion­ing in the same in­dus­try,” said Moonasar.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s protest, BOATT kept their num­bers un­der 25 to keep in line with COVID re­stric­tions as they in­tend­ed to show the gov­ern­ment their in­ten­tion to ad­here to the guide­lines.

The bar own­ers is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al last week and had lob­bied var­i­ous Min­is­ters in­clud­ing the prime min­is­ter for a re­sponse con­cern­ing their call.

They said if they don’t get feed­back from the gov­ern­ment be­fore to­mor­row, they will take fur­ther le­gal ac­tion.