Abdullah Al-Dani

Okaz/Saudi Gazette



JEDDAH — The warning period for cafe owners over smoking is over and the period of penalizing the violators has begun, Dr. Abduaziz Al-Nahari, official spokesman of Jeddah Municipality, has said.



However the official said there are no statistics on the number of violating cafes.



He said that any indoor cafe that offers or allows smoking will be fined and shut down. He added that owners and investors had sough more time, but since the municipality is an implementing body and not a legislative one, granting additional grace period is out of its purview.



A group of investors told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that they would not have invested in this sector had the municipality not licensed them and allowed smoking in the cafes thus deceiving them. They added that it was not sensible that they are fined and forced to bear the burden of municipality’s mistake in its non-compliance with previously announced ministerial directives.



The municipality, they said, should bear their losses, since they were not given an appropriate time to repay their debts, as the smoking ban deprived some cafes of 80 percent of their customers, and the losses are in thousands of riyals per day.



The investors said that this decision will deprive them of income to maintain their families. Moreover, they said they would be forced to sack the Saudis working in these cafes.



The owners suggested granting them a grace period to allow them to split their cafes into a smoking and a non-smoking sections, so that the non-smokers will not complain.