The President of Hotel Owners and Managers Association of Lagos [HOMAL], Chief Sam Alabi has challenged the recently announced penalty for any hotel or tourism establishment that fails to follow the state protocol on COVID-19 or face a N1 million fine.
According to Alabi, ‘’we have for a long time requested from Lagos State government for industry-based protocols for the hospitality sector in Lagos’’
He said HOMAL supports the safety protocols finally released by the state government for the operation of hospitality enterprises, but however frown on the restriction still imposed on fasts food from attending to customers in-house as an overkill.
‘’If churches and mosque; including cinema halls can open for their operation at 50 percent capacity, there is no need to limit fasts food and eateries operation to take away only and argued that such could also be put in place for them’’.
HOMAL also noted that the threat of N1 million fine cannot stand the test of law because Section 4 of the criminal code stipulates that ‘No person shall be liable to be tried or punished in any court in Nigeria for an offence, except under the express provisions of the code or some Act or law which is in force in or forms part of the law of Nigeria.
If Lagos state government is serious about the N1 million fine, it should submit an executive bill to the Lagos House of Assembly to that effect. There HOMAL will be able to make a case against the so-called 1 million Naira bogus fine.
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