Durban - Retail giant Checkers and the KwaZulu-Natal Liquor Board say a high court application to shut down a Durban North liquor store is “ill-conceived and misdirected”.
Checkers and the board were responding to legal action instituted last month by private school Oakridge College, supported by Northwood and Virginia Preparatory Schools, and the local ward committee, seeking an interdict shutting down the bottle store at Checkers, Virginia Circle, pending a review of the licence approval by the board.
Oakridge principal and ward committee secretary Daryl Franks said in court papers that the application had been brought in the “interests of the safety and well-being of children” in the area.
He said the school had lodged an objection stating that the number of drunk vagrants, who he alleged had harassed children, had declined after the closure of another liquor store on the same premises. He said the Liquor Board overruled the objection and granted the licence.
However, in replying papers, Checkers and the Liquor Board stated that the objection had been lodged out of time in August last year and after the licence had been granted. They stated that the licence was applied for in 2010, granted in 2011 and officially issued last June.
Checkers also argued that the store had been trading since June this year without any complaints.
The Liquor Board’s acting executive manager for licensing and administration, Archibold Kubheka, said there was “no evidence” to show that the liquor store would disturb the schools or places of worship in the area.
He added that the licence was properly granted and the objection, which he said had been addressed by the board and responded to by Checkers, did not contain sufficient grounds to refuse it.
“The grounds are almost anecdotal in nature and record the objector’s perceptions and fears rather than any scientific or measured evidence.”
Checkers liquor department project manager Jean Marais agreed with Kubheka.
He said Checkers had published a notice of its intention to apply for a liquor licence in the Government Gazette and there was no reason why the schools did not object within the time limit. He added that Checkers held numerous liquor store licences in KZN and had an exemplary record of complying with the relevant legislation.
He suggested that Franks’s “perceptions and opinions of problems” about “drunk vagrants” were at best “disguised hearsay or at worse sheer speculation”.
He also said the Checkers Liquor shop, an “upmarket facility”, had replaced another liquor store and did not sell “quarts of beer, papsakke or liquor in plastic bottles” which vagrants would probably opt for.
In response, Franks said the objection had been made in time because the board granted a “conditional approval” of the licence in 2011 and it was only issued last June after Checkers went to court to compel the board to issue it.
He said if it was found that the objection was out of time, then it should be condoned because it related to the “protection of minor children”. Franks said the old Liquor Act, which was in force when the licence was granted, directed the board to consider the effect of any licence on places of worship and schools in the area and it had failed to properly carry out this duty.
The matter has been set down to be argued in February.
The Mercury