Members of the Legit Bar, Entertainment, and Restaurant Owners Association of Uganda are holding a presser on Tuesday appealing to the President to Re-open their Businesses with Standard Operating procedures.
Legit Bar, Entertainment, and Restaurant Owners Association that started a year ago constitute various proprietors of Bars, restaurants, music promoters, and concert organizers, and managers among others.
During his COVID-19 address on Sunday night to further lift the lockdown, President Yoweri Museveni maintained that bars, local cinemas halls, Music concerts all stay closed on grounds that they mostly operate in enclosed places which favors the rapid spread of COVID-19.
However, the proprietors while at the atmosphere lounge in Kololo, claim the decision to keep them closed for six months and counting since March 2020 is unfair and unbalanced.
They claim compared to the recent NRM primaries that were characterized by total disregard of all the Ministry of Health guidelines, they can do much better in observing Standard operating procedures-SOPs.
Patrick Musinguzi the Public relations officer says Uganda has over 60.000 licensed bars scattered across the country, employing over 2 million youths and contributing to the country’s economy.
Musinguzi says leaving bars unattended too leaves about 6.3 million people desperate and languishing in poverty.
Musinguzi also sought to correct the mindset that Bar owners are drunkards saying they are simply businesses like those in other sectors.
He appealed to the government to consider reopening bars saying it will work handsomely for the economy as bars on average turn over 8 trillion just in taxes a month in addition to employing youth.
Barbra Natukunda a single mother of six children and proprietor of Texas bar in Nsambya says the closure of the bar business which has been a means of survival for her has totally shattered her.
She says they have lost millions of money in just rent and capital which was injected into the business borrowed from the bank as loans following the lockdown.
Natukunda who now has children in all the candidate classes and aa finalist in the University wonders how she will be able to raise money for her children to return to school.
She is appealing to the gov’t to in the meantime provide bar owners with soft loans to them, as they look into reopening.
