Co-owner of beer stall gets licence letter four months late

A letter from the police on renewing an alcohol licence appears to have taken more than four months after its stated date to reach the co-owner of a beer stall.

Yesterday, SingPost said it was working with the co-owner, Mr Daniel Goh, to investigate the matter and offered its assistance on the case.

Mr Goh said in a Facebook post on Friday that the letter regarding the alcohol licence for his Chinatown Complex beer stall was dated Sept 6, 2018.

But he received it only on Thursday. The SingPost date stamp on the envelope was marked on Wednesday.

"We had to pay for (the licence) before Dec 4, 2018 - it's Feb 1, 2019 today," Mr Goh said.

"This essentially means we have been selling alcohol illegally for the past month without even knowing. We could be shut down any time if the police come checking."

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In an e-mail to The Straits Times on Saturday, Mr Goh said he would be calling the police today.

"We will not be operating the stall from this evening until the matter is resolved and the licence renewed."

The affected stall at Chinatown Complex used to be called The Good Beer Company. Mr Goh's other stall there, Smith Street Taps, remains unaffected.

Responding to comments on Facebook, he admitted that "it's my fault for not keeping track of my own licensing". Still, he added that it cannot be excused that a letter reached its intended recipient months later.

It was unclear if the letter was processed late by SingPost, or sent out late by the police. Mr Goh raised both scenarios in his Facebook post.

POSTMARK

When contacted, a SingPost spokesman told ST that going by Mr Goh's Facebook post, his letter was received and processed on Jan 30, 2019, before it was delivered to him the next day.

The postmark indicates the date when a letter is processed at SingPost's mail processing centre.

"As ordinary mail is not tracked, we are unable to trace the movement of the letter, from its posting to its arrival at our mail processing centre on Jan 30, 2019," said the spokesman.