News - Tighten Excise loopholes, Mahinda tells Commissioner

By Asif Fuard and
Tharangani Perera

President Mahinda Rajapakse directed the Excise Commissioner to take immediate measures to tighten the existing Excise Laws. The directive came after The Sunday Times, last week, reported how casinos were serving liquor on Vesak poya day while the Excise Department continued raids on other locations.

The legislations that would be affected are the number of bottles of liquor that could be transported, the number of bottles that could be stored in a house, the time of day in which liquor cannot be served in restaurants and eating houses covered by the Excise law, legislation relating to liquor being served on days that sale of liquor is banned and laws regarding the serving of liquor.
Excise Commissioner Parakrama Ekanayake told The Sunday Times that they had detected several loopholes in the existing law through which several hoteliers, bar owners and liquor shops escape.

“Due to the easy getaway used by most of these liquor-serving places we have decided to strengthen the Excise Law. We are in the process of making the draft amendments to the Excise Ordinance. We will also be receiving assistance from the Justice Ministry,” he said.
“One such case is casinos which don’t operate under the Excise Law. They operate by saying that they serve free liquor to their clients. We are hoping to bring in new laws to control casinos as well so that they cannot serve liquor on prohibited days,” he said.

“Another particular weak area is the number of vehicles and human resources we have to conduct raids. We hope to improve on this aspect as well,” he said.

“Night Clubs, bars and liquor shops are to be situated away from a 500 metre radius of all places of worship and educational institutions. The owners would be granted a grace period of one year to move to alternate locations. Based on this directive, the Old Empire Hotel in Kandy has already closed down,” he said.

During this Vesak season the Excise Department raided 56 places serving liquor, out of which seven had their liquor licenses cancelled. In most cases it was reported that the bar owners were warned for serving liquor on a prohibited day.

During the Sinhala and Tamil New Year season the Excise Department raided 150 places which were serving liquor. The Department found that most of the offences were in places such as Colombo, Kandy, Ratnapura, Piliyandala and Galle.

The Department also had detected 48,000 cases where alcohol was brewed illegally and officials said since 2004 the number of illegal breweries has steadily risen.