GRTU threatens to ignore anti-smoking rules

Unless the anti-smoking regulations being introduced on April 5 are revised, GRTU members and their families would be directed to ignore them and the Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprise would challenge the government to arrest shop owners and take them to court.

GRTU director general Vince Farrugia told a meeting for shop owners yesterday that they were ready to challenge the legislation because it was unjust and the first shop owner to be taken to court would be accompanied by all of them.

He said that unless the regulations were revised another meeting would be held on March 29 during which directives would be issued.

The regulations state that special areas have to be designated for smoking that would be totally separate from areas normally occupied by non-smokers in any establishments where services are provided to the public.

Mr Farrugia said the regulations were imposing stiff fines on shop owners, rather than on the smokers. In fact, if someone were found smoking in an establishment which did not have a separate smoking area, the owner would be fined a minimum of Lm100.

A second offence could lead to the suspension of the licence for between one week and one month and up to three months' imprisonment.

If this was the attitude the government was going to use, it would face trouble, Mr Farrugia said.

"Our licence is sacrosanct. Our daily bread depends on it and if we do not rebel on this I do not know when we will.

"There is nowhere in the world where such oppressive legislation exists," Mr Farrugia said.

Legislation of this nature, he added, should only be drawn up after consultation.

But while the GRTU had been consulted by the European Commission in Brussels it was not consulted in Malta. The only thing the government had said was that the regulations were untouchable.

Mr Farrugia said shop owners should instead declare whether their establishment was smoking or non-smoking, so that clients would be able to choose whether they wanted to enter.

He asked what the owners of small bars were expected to do. "Are they expected to start registering for employment come April 5? Should we direct them to do so," he asked to applause.

The GRTU said it was asking the government to allow its members to work.

"Hands off people in business. If from now to the end of March, the necessary amendments to the regulations are not made, the GRTU's members and their families and other shop owners will meet again at the Trade Fair grounds to be given their directive not to operate the regulations.

"The GRTU will also challenge the government to arrest shop owners and take them to court."

The one government which had messed with shop owners' licences was never elected again, Mr Farrugia warned.

The president of the GRTU's Hospitality and Leisure Section, Philip Fenech, pointed out that the GRTU was not a pro-smoking lobby but it was all for voluntary choices for as long as cigarettes remained legal.

The proposed regulations, Mr Fenech said, were not an EU directive. The EU was only recommending that its members embark on a campaign to curtail smoking.

Mr Fenech said that even British health secretary John Reid had said he was deeply sceptical about adopting such a policy, arguing that being the "nanny state" should not be the solution for unhealthy lifestyles.

Lawyer Andrew Borg Cardona declared his involvement in the tobacco industry but said he was at the meeting as a lawyer commissioned by the GRTU. The tobacco industry, he said, had not involved itself in the issue regarding the regulations.

Dr Borg Cardona told shop owners that whenever they decided that something was not going to work, it would not work. But market forces were, unfortunately, no defence in the criminal court.

He said that France had tried to implement similar legislation unsuccessfully and the UK was discussing the introduction of something similar in certain towns in 2008.

Those who had drafted the regulations, he pointed out, did not have any idea of the reality of a shop owner's business.

Although some were taking the regulations to mean that the smoking area had to be a totally separate room, all that the regulations called for was a separate area.

Shop owners' biggest problem, he said, could be their employees, who could refuse to work in areas where people were smoking.