The Nairobi County Assembly on Monday heard that over 7,000 liquor stores are operating in the city, exposing even a larger number of residents to high chances of fake, harmful booze.
This was during the County Budget Committee, where Liquor Board CEO Hesbon Agwena told the committee that the last audit on number of bars in Nairobi was done in 2016 which indicated that there are 12,500 outlets in Nairobi.
In response to the unlicensed bars, Mr Agwena said that most of the bars are located in slums and residential areas and do not meet the criteria of issuance of license with most of them failing the public health qualification.
Agwena however when probed by the committee had difficulties in explaining why they were not collecting revenue from those bars and why they were still operating instead of closing them down if at all they did not meet the criteria for licensing.
Utawala MCA Patrick Karani, a member of the committee asked whether that was a strategy being used to collect money outside the established framework saying that he fails to understand how unlicensed bars are left to operate.
“Over the weekends we see most of these officers collecting money from bars and I’m forced to think that that’s a protection fee that operators give your officers so that they continue operating illegally,” stated Karani.
Liquor Board CEO Hesbon Agwena
Agwena however admitted that corruption cannot be ruled out as he cannot know what some of his officers are doing on the ground.
He said they are planning to conduct another audit to establish the number of bars that are currently in Nairobi to get the exact number of all bars and enforce strict measures to non-compliant operators.