Job loss­es and drop­ping rev­enues will re­sult from the Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing's sug­ges­tion to close bars at 1 am, ac­cord­ing to St James and Ari­api­ta Av­enue pro­pri­etors. They were re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to Lee Sing's plans to ask the Chief Mag­is­trate that all re­newals of bar li­cences should state that bars in St James and on Ari­api­ta Av­enue must stop sell­ing al­co­hol at mid­night and close at 1 am.

The own­er of an Ari­api­ta Av­enue nightspot said: "If the may­or gets through with his sug­ges­tion, the im­pact will be dis­as­trous...The bars can­not pos­si­bly sur­vive up un­til the mid­night hour." He said ear­li­er clos­ing times would mean less rev­enue for the bars which would force many busi­ness own­ers to cut down on staff.

He said busi­ness own­ers on the Av­enue had in­vest­ed mil­lions in their busi­ness­es and it was "un­fair and un­just" to sud­den­ly have an em­bar­go placed on them. He added that the neg­a­tive fi­nan­cial ef­fect would go be­yond the bars and their staff. He said in­di­rect em­ploy­ees such as clean­ing crews and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty would al­so be in dan­ger of los­ing their jobs. "We are look­ing at tens of thou­sands be­ing put on the bread­line be­cause of this," the busi­ness­man said. The own­er of an­oth­er Ari­api­ta pop­u­lar lim­ing spot said Lee Sing's idea was "ab­solute­ly ab­surd" and "eco­nom­i­cal­ly un­fea­si­ble."

He said ac­cord­ing to re­cent sta­tis­tics. Ari­api­ta Av­enue was the sec­ond high­est rev­enue gen­er­a­tor next to Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain. He said not on­ly would peo­ple lose their jobs but the coun­try would lose valu­able rev­enue de­rived from tax­es paid by such es­tab­lish­ments. He said he un­der­stood Lee Sing's con­cerns about crime but stat­ed in the Wood­brook area "crime had no re­la­tion­ship to bars on the Av­enue." He said if Lee Sing was con­cerned about the crime and pub­lic dis­tur­bances he need­ed to en­sure there was ad­e­quate po­lice pres­ence. He said in Bar­ba­dos' pop­u­lar St Lawrence Gap, foot po­lice con­stant­ly pa­trolled the area and in the case of park­ing, cars parked il­le­gal­ly were im­me­di­ate­ly towed.

Pro­pri­etors in St James shared the views of their Ari­api­ta coun­ter­parts say­ing job loss­es would oc­cur and a great po­lice pres­ence was need­ed. Smokey and Bun­ty day man­ag­er Mar­lon Black­man said hun­dreds of peo­ple would lose their jobs should bars have to close at one o'clock. He said busi­ness nor­mal­ly picked up af­ter mid­night and an ear­ly clos­ing time would re­sult in rev­enue loss. Black­man said the prob­lem with bars clos­ing ear­ly was peo­ple won't go home but would con­tin­ue to lime on the streets, which would be prob­lem­at­ic.

He said he un­der­stood Lee Sing's con­cern with crime, but in­sist­ed clos­ing bars ear­ly would not solve the prob­lem. Black­man said a greater po­lice pres­ence was need­ed to con­trol row­dy peo­ple and en­sure safe­ty on the streets. He said Lee Sing should have con­sult­ed with all bar own­ers be­fore he made the sug­ges­tions. Black­man said: "Last week it was the ven­dors, this week it's the bars. What's next?