13 restaurants ticketed for increasing prices during holiday

José Tavares (center)

The Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) fined 13 restaurants during the Spring Festival holiday, IAM president José Maria da Fonseca Tavares revealed yesterday.

During the Lunar New Year holiday, IAM carried out more than 200 inspections at local restaurants, finding that 13 of the inspected premises had not declared price increases to the government. The number of such violations is similar to that of the same period of the previous year.

The IAM president claims that his bureau has already enhanced promotional campaigning concerning the the declaration procedure of price increases during holidays and, according to Tavares, this procedure has been simplified.

IAM will continue inspecting the restaurants, with the bureau examining whether the restaurants maintain their changed prices for a long period after the beginning of the Lunar New Year.

In addition, José Tavares reported that IAM Connect (the platform for immediate feedback about the bureau) had been receiving around 10 opinions on a daily basis since its launch.

Before the holiday started, the platform had received more than 700 opinions, 30 to 40 percent of which were related to trash pilling up.

The bureau was able to reply to the opinions within 24 hours, according to José Tavares.

The IAM has been established for more than one month. Its president said that the bureau would try to deliver two bills to the Chief Executive Council within the first half of 2019 concerning the management of street markets and vendors.

The bill will be drafted to suit the future development of vendors and street markets.

Additionally, IAM expects to launch a public tender to build an animal embalming museum in Coloane in two to three months. It is hoped that construction of the museum will be completed by the end of this year, and operations are expected to start around the same time.