The Gaming Authority has rejected the application for a casino licence made by owner of the Sleepin Hotel Chains Clifton Bacchus.
“They made a decision to not grant the licence for the Sleepin Casino,” a source told Stabroek News yesterday.
Bacchus, the owner of the proposed 150-room Sleepin Hotel and Casino, says he has the required permits and is ready to create 300 jobs at the entity, despite attacks by competitors and others about the suitability of the hospitality and gambling outfit on Church Street, Georgetown.
Confident that he would have been granted the licence, Bacchus last month conducted interviews.
But the gaming authority—comprising Chairman Roysdale Forde and members Christine King, George Vaughn and Geeta Chandan-Edmond—found that Bacchus did not meet the requisite criteria.
The Gambling (Amendment) Act allows for the creation of casino premises and the issuance of a casino operator’s licence but it makes clear that “no more than three casino premises licences” may be issued in respect of any one of the country’s ten regions and limits the issuance of such licences to new hotel or resort complexes that have “a minimum of one hundred and fifty rooms allocated for accommodation.”
Under Section 30 of the 2007 Act, the legislation also stipulates that gambling in a licensed casino is limited to “a paying guest accommodated in a room of the hotel of resort complex in respect of which the casino premises license was issued or any other person or class of persons authorized by the regulations.” Under Section 31, persons contravening the regulations “commit an offence and are liable on summary conviction to a fine of not less than one million dollars and not more than twenty million dollars and imprisonment for a term of not less than six months nor more than two years.”
Bacchus had told Stabroek News that he is in possession of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between himself and the Government of Guyana, signed under the Donald Ramotar administration in 2014. This MOU guarantees him a licence to operate a casino once he is able to complete construction in line with several specifications.
According to Bacchus, as far as he is aware, each administrative region is allowed to have a total of three licenced casinos.
“Princess got one, Marriott got one, that leaves one more for Region 4. If I build to the specifications, then I’ll have it,” Bacchus had previously said.
Persons living in the Church Street vicinity of the proposed casino had voiced objections to the planned casino in the residential area.
In a letter to Stabroek News in March, former Chief Magistrate Kalam Juman-Yassin said that he was “completely opposed” to the opening of a casino in the area.
According to Juman-Yassin, four buildings east of the construction is the Central Seventh Day Adventist Church, while the Queenstown Mosque is approximately two hundred yards away from the proposed casino. He also noted that the Merriman Mall between “Church Street and North Road in that area is being converted to a family area with emphasis on young children having a playing area.”
“A casino,” Yassin stressed, “will be a bad example for our young children in addition to creating a parking nightmare and a great deal of inconvenience to the residents of that neighbourhood.” Several residents echoed his concerns.
