Yesterday’s closure of the controversial Kuerks restaurant bar along Pelaez Street, barangay Kamagayan was supposed to be cut and dried.
Except when a Cebu City Hall team served the closure order, not one staffer accepted it since the management supposedly closed the place.
What’s more puzzling was that the staffers claimed that the bar is no longer known as Kuerks bar but Knock Box bar said Raquel Arce, Prevention Restoration Order Beautification Enhancement (Probe) chief.
Juanita Monina Paires, head of the city’s tax mapping and inspection division, said she heard from Kuerks workers that the bar was already sold to Mari Giev Flores, the owner of the nearby Knock Box bar.
While they have yet to verify this report, several promotional materials on Knock Box’s budget meal offers are posted on the iron fence used to secure the vicinity of the Kuerks bar at day time.
Arce, who served the closure order, said there was no sign that the bar would open when they arrived at past 2 p.m. because the tables and the chairs were not displayed properly for the customers.
They went to the office and talked to two female personnel who didn’t reveal their names.
The two personnel claimed that the bar was already closed upon the management’s order.
Arce said one of the two staffers turned out to be a barangay councilor of Duljo Fatima because she refused to be photographed by a member of the City Hall team during their inspection.
When told that the place is now known as Knock Box bar, Arce was surprised and asked how that happened when the signages outside showed it was Kuerks Restaurant Bar.
But the staffers said they were having some renovations and they first fixed the roofing before changing the name.
“They said they will change the signages later and they’re just fixing the roof,” Arce said.
Arce said she realized that the Knock Box bar was actually located beside the Kuerks Restaurant Bar.
She said it means that Kuerks management wanted to make it appear that the area is a part of the Knock Box bar expansion.
“Bright gyud kon kinsa man ang tag-iya (Whoever owns the place is bright),” Arce laughed.
But Arce said there was no indication that the Kuerks Restaurant Bar officially changed its status at the treasurer’s office.
Besides, Arce said Knock Box bar will then have to assume the nearly half a million pesos in back taxes owed by Kuerks Resto Bar.
She said they will refer this matter to the the City Legal Office.
Arce said Knock Box Bar is also under investigation by the City Treasurer’s Office because it also served liquor when it does not have a permit to sell liquor.
There were rumors that the Kuerks and Knock Box are owned by one and the same person, but Arce said, she didn’t know about it.
Arce said they decided to just post the closure order on the wall and a closure notice at the entrance that was also chained and padlocked.
“If they open this without authority from the city they will be considered violators,” she said.
The order precludes the filing of appropriate criminal or other cases against the bar’s management.
Kuerks Resto Bar was found to have violated both the anti-noise and the liquor sale ordinances of the city.
Records from the City Treasurers Office show that a 2012 permit was issued for the establishment’s operation to a certain Richard C. Aznar.
Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma urged Metro Cebu local governments to regulate the establishments that sell liquors even to minors.With Correspondent Michelle Joy L. Padayhag