Silent after 10pm

Night club revellers can now drink until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays – but if they want to dance after 10pm they’ll have to do so without music.

Liquor trading hours have been extended from 10pm to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays only, though music must cease at 10pm.
A Cabinet decision states that:

1. The 10pm curfew for selling liquor from Mondays to Thursdays remains.
2. Selling Liquor on Fridays to Saturdays will continue until 12midnight.

3. Night Clubs’ music will stop at 10pm.  “There have been complaints from the people that they can’t sleep,” said the Chairman of the Liquor Board, Tuu’u Anasi’i Leota. So the new hours is a compromise, he said.

 “They (nightclub owners) say they are not able to pay their loans, because they are not getting enough revenue. So we’ve decided to come up with this.”

Tu’u’u revealed they are considering the option of relocating nightclubs to a secluded area.
“To some area far from where the people live, so they (night clubs) can blast the music to their liking,” he said.
The Vaitele industrial zone is an option.

But one nightclub owner operating there, Alofipo Johnny Lang Siu said that wasn’t even safe. The owner of the Working Mens Pub said his business was closed for two weeks following complaints from a senior government official who had just moved there.

“This guy just moved here yesterday and we’ve been here for nearly two years,” he said of the senior government official.
“We’ve never had a complaint before he moved here.”

Alofipo said the official made two complaints. After his first compliant, Alofipo said he turned down his music considerably.
But the Liqour Board ordered his business shut after a second complaint.

“The family next-door who is closer to the pub than him has never made a complaint. I don’t know why he is complaining.”
Alofipo asked the Liquor Board to monitor his music to see if it was too loud.
“The assistant to the minister came here the other night,” Alofipo said.

“I asked him what he thought about the music and he told me it was OK. But then they still closed my business.”
Alofipo does not support the new opening hours.
 “To be honest, this is a nightclub and nowhere in the world would something like this ever happen,” he said.

 “We might as well shut at 10 because there will be even more noise without the music with people fighting and singing.”
Another nightclub owner, Ray Fruean, of Vbar, agrees.
“We don’t make the rules, we just play by them,” he said.

 “The one thing we do hope the public will understand is that it’s not us when the music goes off.
“We hope next time the Liquor Board will be a bit more acceptable of our requirements, we will give knock on their door in the next couple of weeks.”
They hope to get an answer before the festive season.