The City of Cape Town has called on national government to reconsider revised curfew restrictions under lockdown level 2.
“I will be urgently communicating with my national counterparts in the tourism and trade and industry portfolios respectively to reconsider the curfew restrictions announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday,” said Mayoral Committee member for Economic Opportunities and Asset Management, James Vos.
During previous lockdowns, the city had made similar submissions behalf of key sectors such as business process outsourcing, clothing and textile, tourism, and hospitality.
“While measures are needed to dampen the COVID-19 third wave and reduce infections, our economy cannot afford these curfews. Losing trading hours every night has pushed many businesses to the brink, with many not being able to retain customers, pay bills, or keep staff employed,” said Vos.
He explained that the city, together with Cape Town Tourism, had developed a bounce-back strategy for the tourism sector.
“In February this year, after almost a year of learning hard lessons, we implemented our 10-Point Tourism Strategy, focused on not only getting Cape Town’s tourism industry back up and running, but ensuring it was better than before.”
Vos added that, as a result, the city had seen its hospitality and tourism sectors claw back gains after a tough 2020. Domestic flights to Cape Town International Airport rose by 66% in the first half of May, the strongest recovery since the resumption of local flights in June 2020. Restaurants and local tourism providers had seen a resultant uptick in business.
“But these revised measures threaten to remove many of these gains. Our tourism sector and many small businesses will almost certainly be the most affected.
“Cape Town’s economy is highly reliant on the tourism and related sectors for jobs and economic activity and we know that, according to the latest information from Statistics South Africa, the tourism sector added R130 billion (€7.83m) to our economy and supported just over 113 000 jobs in 2018. Small businesses also absorb about 70% of South Africa’s workforce,” said Vos.
