National Bar Owners Association secretary general Boniface Gachoka, has said that the continuous demonstrations in the country might lead to the layoff of some casuals.
Speaking in an interview with Citizen TV on Friday, he said that if things remain constant by next week, majority of the casuals are going to be released.
“By the end of next week, we are predicting a reduction of casuals. We are going to reduce the number of casuals by 50 per cent. We support around 560,000 employees in this country,” Gachoka said.
“So by the end of next week, if things remain constant, majority of the casuals are going to be released. These are our children and people who are going to be affected.”
He said due to the ongoing protests, the liquor industry is operating worse off than during the Covid season.
“We are operating very low in terms of performance. Every day when there are demonstrations we are losing sales worth Sh300 million. We lose purchases worth Sh150 million. The tax man also loses Sh200 million per day,” Gachoka said.
“This is going to have a very strong impact on how we are going to report at the end of the day and how many businesses are going to be sustained.”
He said the demonstrations are causing additional costs that will cause manufacturers to incur extra costs, which will affect consumers.
“As we are headed to the next phase of maandamano, we will be forced to hire policemen to accompany the transport of our goods for the distributors, retailers, stockers and manufacturers. They will be forced to incur an extra cost which will be passed to the final consumer,” Gachoka said.
He said an increase in taxes on extra duties, will lead to extra unpredicted costs that will be passed to the consumers.
“We’ve been complaining about the government increasing taxes every year on excess duty. That excess duty is passed to the consumer,” he said.
“The most unfortunate thing is that the normal complains we’ve been making as an association, is that illicit is going to go up and counterfeits are going to increase as we continue with the maandamano.”
