The Sleepin International Hotel on Church Street in Georgetown can now officially open the doors to its casino after being granted full license by The Gaming Authority to operate.
The granting of the license has brought an end to an almost six year wait by the company.
Managing Director of the Sleepin International Hotel company, Clifton Bacchus told News Source this afternoon that he is excited and relieved with the granting of the license.
“This is a weight off my shoulder and I am very happy. The investment was there and even then we could not get through and we had to keep going back through everything again. But now we have the license and we are ready to begin operations with all the social distancing and other COVID-19 requirements in place”, Mr. Bacchus said.
He explained that with the granting of the license, he has already moved to hire 150 persons to begin working almost immediately. Many of them were already trained and have been waiting over the past few years to begin their jobs in the casino industry. The Managing Director explained that refresher training has started and he looks forward to building the brand.
Bacchus explained that his initial plan was to hire 300 persons, but he noted that the COVID-19 situation has forced the hotel and the casino to scale down the number of persons to be hired as the hotel and tourism industry slowly crawls back to operation.
The businessman who is currently looking at expanding the Sleepin brand outside of Guyana said the investment into the casino was a major one and he lost a lot over the past years as he waited on the granting of the license. He explained that he was forced to return some equipment and now he will have to bring those pieces back.
The Sleepin International Hotel opened its doors in 2017 and had submitted a number of applications to operate a casino. Under the previous board of The Gaming Authority, there were multiple requests for information on the investors and funding for the project. Despite many pieces of information being provided, the license was still not granted.
A new Board was installed just after the change of Government in August and the company immediately moved to have its application examined again.
Bacchus received notice of the granting of the license recently.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login