Bars and night clubs in Zambia support over 1 million livelihoods. The number of registered bars and nightclubs now stands at 36,000. When you take an average of five (5) direct employees, this translates to about 180,000 jobs.
And when you take an average family size or family support structure in Zambia of about 6 people per household, you will note that bars and nightclubs support over 1 million (36,000 registered bars/nightclubs * 5 direct jobs * 6 family members = 1,080,000) livelihoods.
For the vast majority of people, bars and night clubs are place to remove stress or a place of relaxation after a long day or week of work. Other people are the happiest when they are at their favorite bar or night club as they get to show off their dancing skills, to drown their troubles and sometimes the dancing is one way to kit fit.
Bars and night clubs also support huge tax payers like brewing companies, have auxiliary workers such as DJ’s, support logistics and trucking businesses, security services and many others too numerous to mention. Simply put, the bars and night clubs support a vast number of jobs and are a source of livelihood for many families.
Speaking to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT in an exclusive interview, The Bars and Night Club Owners Association of Zambia (BANCOAZ) has confirmed that it currently has over 36,000 registered members whose businesses have been shut due to the health restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the corona virus – Covid 19.
“We are waiting for the president to address our concerns as BANCOAZ, we are looking forward to government just itself giving us a go ahead to open our business because we have been closed for over three months now and this has negatively affected our members. We have told our 36,400 registered members to get ready to open their bar/night clubs this Saturday”, he said.
BANCOAZ also disclosed that on 27 May, 2019, they had a consultative meeting as directed by the president on how bar/night clubs are going to open and operate amid the pandemic.
“We agreed with government that bars and night clubs should be opened in the shortest possible time with regards to COVID19. What we agreed is that bars for the first two weeks, should operate between 12 hours to 18 hours every day and after two weeks we are going to sit down with them with the possibility of operating full time”, he said.
He also stressed that government has never helped them since the closure of bars and that they have not received any money from the K10 billion stimulus package made available by Bank of Zambia – BOZ and that only foreigners will be the main beneficiaries of this package because the requirements from commercial banks are too much for most local club owners to meet.
“We suspect that the commercial banks will just hold on to this money or lend it out at exorbitant interest rates or that they will only lend out to big foreign companies. They are telling us that that Ministry of Finance directed them to give these loans to the business that are identified in the national development plan”.
“These are businesses from the energy sector, manufacturing and tourism. They are looking at big tourism companies like hotels but we argued that night clubs fall under tourism, non of our members has been given, and records are there to show this. We have got records of Zambians who have gone to their banks to access this money and have been denied. So this money though meant for Zambias will only end up enriching foreign companies”, he said.
BANCOAZ has requested government to give them something different from the stimulus package because the many of their members can’t meet the requirements and interest rate given by commercial banks.
“We are requesting government to please give us something different from the stimulus package because these are loans. Bank of Zambia is giving these bank the money at 12.5 % and in return these commercial banks are lending it out at interest rates which are as high as 15%. Very few of our members can afford such interest rates at the moment and as you are aware, 90% of our members’ country wide don’t have meaningful bank lending accounts to talk about, they run on hand to mouth. It’s survival everyday”, he said.
“We had sat down with government and we were just looking for minimal amounts to keep our businesses afloat. We asked government to give something to our members who are renting the business premises they are operating from. Most of our members are renting and the average amount for rentals is about K3,500 per month. We were just asking for government to meet us half way”, he said.
The association has further appealed to police to allow them resume their operations from Saturday 13 June 2020 and that its either their members are killed by guns or COVID19 kills them. It’s a tough situation and we need a solutions urgently. This matter is also partly responsible for the wiping out of revenues for Musicians and artists, so its a big issue.
