Tan Yit Sheng
KUCHING (Jan 16): The limited celebration of Chinese New Year festival this year due to Covid-19 outbreak will create an additional burden on the already hard-hit coffeeshop operators, said Kapitan Tan Yit Sheng.
The Kuching Coffee Shop and Restaurant Owners Association committee member said the latest development on festival celebration was on top of the recently implemented Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) and flooding issues that coffeeshop operators in the city had to deal with.
“The Chinese New Year festival used to be the peak season for coffeeshop and restaurant operators as Sarawakians residing outside of the state would return to enjoy local delicacies together with their family members, indirectly creating a vibrant business environment,” Tan told The Borneo Post today.
Thus, he hoped the state government would intervene by providing a one-off financial assistance of RM500 to stall operators to tide them over the effects caused by the CMCO and address their financial hardship.
“Visiting coffeeshops has been so ingrained in our lifestyle and it’s part of our culture in Sarawak. So, any restrictions on activities or even school’s closure would definitely hit us hard, as parents would venture out of the house less.”
If the business climate continues to worsen in the near future, Tan believed there would be more coffeeshops being forced to permanently close, in addition to the some 20 per cent of the existing 1,500 food premises in and around the city that had done so.
Tan, who operates a coffeeshop at Gala City, Jalan Tun Jugah here, said that customers’ traffic had dropped by about 40 per cent since the implementation of CMCO on Jan 13 and operators were also suffering from one of the worst floods in decades happening in Kuching this week.
“On a positive side, customers seems to be getting used to the new normal of living under movement restrictions and the impacts on customers volume caused by CMCO were not as drastic as during the CMCO in November last year,” said Tan.