By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Tall Pines MP Leslie Miller said Mario’s Bowling and Family Entertainment Palace will close down until further notice following inquiries from this newspaper after the establishment reopened this week.

The latest Emergency Powers Order prohibits entertainment facilities from reopening. However, Mr Miller said his company resumed operations after noticing that another entertainment business, Skate City at the Bacardi Plant, reopened.

“We opened after we saw them,” he said yesterday. “We will close down again. We were of the opinion that these business places that have the capacity and were able to serve customers in the proper manner could do so. We only operating 25 lanes, we have all the social distancing in place. You can get sanitised, we check your temperature, all of it.”

A representative of Skate City said the establishment got permission to reopen as long as they followed established guidelines.

Mr Miller said his business may have lost $20,000 every month it has been closed.

“Over the last five, six months, there has been a devastating impact on the business,” he said. “You could appreciate that a company that just came on stream, to be devastated by this virus like this, you almost get to the point of no return. The Bahamian people want to go out and have some fun in their life, but it just can’t happen. It is such a heavy burden.”

He added: “We have all the proper mechanisms in place like most businesses have. Why should we not be able to open? We (are) following the guidelines. How else are we going to be able to survive? BEC is still on, you got your freezers, you got your refrigeration, you got lanes that got to be cool in the day, you got security. We (are) burning air-conditioning at least 12 to 40 hours in a day. To replace one lane at Mario’s costs $70,000 and we got 50 of those lanes so they have to be cool. Every day you have to turn the air-conditioner on. We invested some $12m in the bowling alley. We lost everything. On average, expenses right now are about $20,000 a month.

“I’m sure many small businesses are now closed down and the banks aren’t congenial to give any slack. You don’t know who to turn to. I feel sorry for all those small and medium sized businesses. This is a situation the world has never seen before and if you think we are catching hell, think about the employees. The NIB cannot be the purveyor of taking care of every Bahamian like this. What is going to be the end game for the small businesses in this country that have already been struggling with this virus? Think about your landlord that has two or three units in Stapledon Gardens and people say ‘I can’t pay the mortgage because I work at Atlantis and I getting $150 per week and my room is $750?’ How do you survive?”