Southern councillors approve fixed late-night trading times to protect neighbourhood peace

TDT | Manama

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Councillors in Southern Governorate have agreed fixed opening hours for shops and workshops across the area, after an extraordinary session that brought together municipal, labour, police, health and trade representatives.

Meeting yesterday, the Southern Municipal Council unanimously agreed to regulate trading times for commercial outlets within the governorate.

The decision covers commercial and service premises in, and near, residential neighbourhoods and is framed as a way to organise trading hours and protect residents’ peace and quiet.

In its report, the technical committee said: "Our aim is to preserve calm in residential areas, ease traffic on local streets and raise standards of public cleanliness, while reducing security and social problems linked to late-night trading."

Under the move, restaurants, cafes, boutiques and other shops in or near housing areas will be allowed to open from 5am until midnight. Garages, workshops, scrap yards and all other service outlets in residential districts will be limited to working hours from 7am to 7pm.

Debate then shifted to enforcement and the way licences are granted.

Criticism

Second Constituency representative Mubarak Faraj criticised the decision to licence a shop selling electronic cigarettes at a petrol station in the Southern Governorate after it applied to operate round the clock.

He said the technical committee, which he chaired at the time, had already studied and rejected the request on the grounds that there was no need for a 24-hour outlet.

"Licensing a 24-hour vape shop at a petrol station is unnecessary and carries serious risks," Faraj said.

Council chairman Abdullah AbdulLatif told the meeting that a number of outlets properly licensed to trade around the clock complain about the fees that come with those permits, while some non-compliant shops open 24 hours a day without paying anything.

Checks

He called for closer checks on such breaches and for clear display of permits at premises that are allowed to trade through the night, so that inspectors can more easily spot shops which are breaking the rules.

The Councillor said follow-up work on these cases was once handled by the municipality alone, then moved to the Interior Ministry and is now shared between both sides.

Council member Hamad Al Zaabi drew attention to a sharia-based legal opinion, written into the law, which states that decisions to close commercial outlets fall to the municipal council, while the municipality carries out those decisions.4

"The law makes clear that closing commercial outlets is the council’s responsibility, while the municipality carries out enforcement," Al Zaabi said, adding that the municipality is able to tell whether a shop trading 24 hours a day is in breach or not.

Support

Al Zaabi urged colleagues to support the technical committee’s proposal for small and medium-sized shops to trade for 18 hours a day, from 5am until midnight, and to convert that proposal into a formal decision to be sent to the relevant authorities for action.

He noted that the same system is already in force in the Northern Governorate and called for it to be applied in the Southern Governorate as well, in co-operation with the Interior Ministry and other concerned bodies.

The Councilor also said the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) should carry out inspections and check the validity of work permits, pointing to its link with the municipality on issues such as residency breaches, and he praised staff in the municipal inspection section and officers from the Interior Ministry.