Storm over drinking hours

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The Daily Dispatch has learnt that the board has taken over Buffalo City Municipality's (BCM) role in imposing drinking hours after a high court earlier suspended the hours which the municipality had imposed.

On Friday, 13 November 2009, the high court sheriff served notices on the board, the Minister of Safety and Security and a number of police stations, to inform them that an urgent application would be brought requesting the Grahamstown High Court to overrule the board's intervention.

The action was brought by 19 hoteliers, restaurant owners and pubs and B&Bs including Numbers, the Gonubie Hotel, Buccaneers and Jacqueline's Bar.

In a notice, the ECLB warned that licence holders who served liquor after the new trading hours imposed by the board would face criminal action.

The board issued the new trading hours after Judge Jeremy Pickering in February suspended BCM's stringent by-laws, which would have prohibited drinking after 11pm on weekdays and forbidden early champagne breakfasts on Sundays.

“We cannot allow liquor outlets to trade for 24 hours when there are no municipal by-laws. That would be irresponsible,” said ECLB chief executive Gonza Mati.

In terms of the notice, the trading hours are now restricted to 10pm on Sundays until Thursdays, while liquor could be sold until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

The new trading hours have, however, elicited strong criticism from the chairperson of the Economic Affairs portfolio committee in the provincial Legislature.

“I am very uncomfortable with that decision,” said chairperson Xola Pakati.

Pakati said that the new trading hours, which have been imposed days before the festive season starts, “risks compromising economic spin-offs (in the hospitality sector)”.

Pakati said he had raised his concerns with Mati.

Attorney André Schoombee, who represents the 19 establishments, confirmed that the high court sheriff had served notices on the board and other parties on Friday.

He said his clients did not object to liquor trading hours but the process should be done with consultation.

“Not by blanket decisions.”

In an affidavit Quigney Liquor Forum chairperson Dee Love said in terms of the Liquor Act the board had to consider, approve or refuse applications for licence registrations.

It may also cancel or vary licence conditions, which have to be published in the Government Gazette.

She said section 42 of the Act which deals with trading hours states that “a person who is registered to sell liquor may a) despite any other law sell liquor on any day of the week; and b) sell liquor during hours determined by the municipality in whose area of jurisdiction the premises are”.

Love said BCM's by-laws had been suspended by the high court as a result of the lack of consultation by the municipality. It failed in terms of the Municipal Systems Act to allow public comment on the proposed by-laws.

“It is perhaps in these circumstances that the ECLB now sought to appropriate itself the authority to prescribe hours of trading in liquor.”

Source: Daily Dispatch

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