Remembered the last time you partied till the wee hours of the morning openly in Singapore? Well, that seemed like an eternity ago for many of us.
A business association has recently said:
“The nightlife entertainment industry has “unfairly suffered” for wrongdoings of errant KTV operators”
After the recent KTV cluster, the Singapore Nightlife Business Association (SNBA) which represents the nightlife industry in Singapore, appealed to the public not to stereotype the entire industry because of these minority few.
The association said in an open letter to the Government:
“In the past few weeks, the broad spectrum of nightlife has unfairly suffered for the wrongdoings of a handful of errant operators who run unlawful KTVs with unlicensed social hostesses.
“These unlawful operators were breaking the rules of public entertainment and the regulations under the Covid-19 Control Order”
However, the industry came under fire by the public earlier this month after the Ministry of Health said that it was investigating cases of COVD-19 among hostesses who had frequented KTV lounges operating as F&B outlets
The authorities then clarified that no KTV lounges in the Covid-19 cluster received a government grant to convert their businesses.
The association then said that based on its records, 16 operators who had run unlawful KTVs with unlicensed social hostesses had done so using a temporary F&B licence from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) to operate.
Another 20 operators already possessed a licence to conduct F&B operations granted by SFA or did not have an F&B licence.
“Whether the unlawful KTVs bothered to obtain an F&B licence through SFA application prior to Covid-19 or through a pivot, (it) does not separate them from those unlawful KTVs who did not have an F&B licence at all.
“Ultimately, all these KTVs were flouting the law,” SNBA said.