Liquor board a barrier to progress

Feedback from the trade and newspaper reports over the past 18 months would indicate that it now takes more than five months, on average, to get a liquor licence. It is virtually impossible to get any comment or feedback from the GLB offices in Johannesburg or Pretoria as the telephones just keep on ringing.

Restaurateurs are forced to trade without licences in these circumstances as liquor sales generally make up 30% of total turnover of a restaurant, and without a licence in a shopping centre, you are dead. It often leads to restaurants being raided by the police.

This results in fines, loss of stock, embarrassment in front of customers and benefit for competitors. Raiding restaurants in Hatfield, Centurion, and several other places is good PR for the police as it normally makes the front pages of local newspapers. It at least shows they are doing their work and is much easier than chasing hijackers.

Many believe slow delivery of licences is because the majority of applicants are white. A rough analysis of applications every month on the website supports the fact that most seem to come from this population group. One is hesitant to even think that this could be so.

One way around the licence (and time) problem, is for restaurateurs to apply for an occasional permit or a catering licence which would be valid for, respectively, seven days or a few weeks while their permanent licence is being processed. These licences would then be renewed regularly until the permanent licence has been issued. The GLB stopped this for no apparent reason.

Why it should take so long to process a licence is beyond comprehension. An industry that is one of the major job creators, especially of lower educated people, must now pay the price for a total lack of service delivery or understanding of one bureaucratic government body.

As the backlog of applications increases, and the processing of licences seemingly comes to a standstill, the only remedy entrepreneurs have is to go the legal route (at a cost).

Last year the GLB was twice forced through mandamus court applications in the high court to process applications. They did it but then reverted to their old ways.

Apparently, when recently reminded of this court decision, the answer was in the vein of: “bugger the court”. This attitude is nothing new from the GLB. The chief director and the GLB were found to be in contempt of the high court twice in two months in 2007.

How long will the premier of Gauteng allow this circus to continue?

The exciting and positive initiatives of the new government to create an enabling environment for SMMEs in this country has been eroded by a provincial government body which is inefficient and officious.

Source: Business Day

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