Lessors, Now Is The Time For Compassion

Non-essential businesses, such as restobars and sports bars, need help

- Johannes L. Chua

“Non-essential services or businesses.” That was the classification given to spas, parlors, gyms, entertainment venues, clubs, karaoke joints, restobars, sports bars, among others. Yes, you don’t need to go to these places to “survive” the crisis as you can temporarily wear your hair long, exercise at home, or just do Zoom parties and e-numan. But when everything is all right and you can gather friends once more, these places may not be around to welcome you back.

A lot of businesses will feel the loss in the coming days. But for nonessential businesses, they would feel it more, as the crisis hits them harder. The almost three-month zero income for them was a death sentence as most are SMEs, or small and medium-sized enterprises.

As an SME, a business may not have that much capital (it relies on sales to pay for salaries, rent, and other expenses), hire a few workers (and a lot rely on service charges and tips from customers), and all of them need to fill the maximum capacity of their space to earn (the more customers, the better). When the DTI announced that it was now allowing these businesses to open at a “50 percent capacity,” it was a bitter pill to swallow. Though business owners know that this is for the general good in order to fight the spread of Covid-19, for others, it was “time to go.”