Yesterday, in the city of Bogotá, about 400 operators and people from the industry met, in favour of a prompt reopening, expressing the need for the sector in this pandemic to reopen after completing more than 5 months without opening.
Two days ago, the mayor Claudia Lopez, made public her economic reopening plan where she showed that the casinos were not yet part of it, an argument that was the main trigger for this protest to be called, since in cities such as Cartago, Ibagué and Medellín casinos have already started their reopening. And since the law establishes that the opinions of the affected community must be taken into account, the mayor received about 700 emails with letters of suggestions, opinions and changes that should be made to the decree published on August 24, with a time limit to submit the comments until August 25 at 2 PM
Entrepreneurs in the sector are among those comments that were sent to the Bogotá mayor's office. In addition, Mundo Video supported the comments sent, through its Twitter account seeking to get the mayor to consider the proposals sent by those who represent gambling sector.
Now, the demonstrations carried out by the union yesterday began at 10:00 in the morning from Carrera 7 with Calle 19 to Plaza de Bolívar, the date and place from where it was agreed to start accompanied by media such as CityTv and Canal Uno. Through WhatsApp groups, a technological tool that served to agree on the entire march, the participants were asked to wear black clothes symbolizing the "death of the industry due to negligence of the government, and of the mayor of Bogotá." , in addition to carrying placards, posters and other elements that were consistent to capture the nonconformity that the sector has today.
In this way, the demonstration focused on decree 1168 of August 25, 2020 issued by the national government, which establishes which activities are prohibited for reopening, and among them are NOT casinos. Giving casinos the green light to operate again.
It should be noted that, according to the structure of the national government, mayors must absolutely obey all directives issued by the presidency or high government.
Adding to this, 80% of the casinos in Bogotá do not exceed the rooms of 20 slots machines, that is, they do not qualify as large capacity or places of agglomeration of people, with the 550 casinos in the city it is possible to employ 60 thousand people, most of them mothers heads of households. This sector contributes 500 thousands million pesos annually to the health system.
After several hours of publicly expressing their discontent, a representative of the Bogotá mayor's office came out to speak with the leaders and reach an agreement. In this way, an act was signed with the organizers of the march to agree on a meeting that will take place today at 10 in the morning.
Billiards on which the minutes of meeting with the guilds of gambling, and billiards were signed. Both demonstrations coincided in the place.
It is expected that after this meeting, both parties can reach an agreement regarding the reopening of casinos. However, the mayor also through her Twitter account assured that as for the month of September there will be no pilot tests for the reopening of schools, so she decided to use that epidemiological quota that was available to reactivate new activities or economic sectors.
It will then be used for the retail sectors that sell non-essential goods (hardware stores, hairdressers, stationery stores, among others) and for religious centres. With these new modifications, the decree was sent yesterday to the Ministry of the Interior for its approval and entry into force.
