Society Stores closed indefinitely as Waititu fight against alcohol intensifies.

Stranded employees of Society Stores Thika ponder their next move as their premises were shut by the County Government of Kiambu following a crackdown on alcohol outlets within the county.

A popular supermarket in Thika was shut down indefinitely on Wednesday as the Kiambu County Government continues in its crackdown on all alcohol outlets operating illegally.

Society Stores, located along Commercial Street was raided around 2:30pm in an inter-agency operation involving the police and county government reinforcement officers who ordered out all customers and employees of the supermarket before instructing the management to close down the shop.

According to one of the officers who declined to be named, their action was necessitated by the supermarket’s management allowing the sale of alcoholic drinks during the day and without a permit. He also accused the store of even selling alcohol to minors.

However, employees at the shop denied these allegations saying that they operated within the confines of the law and never sold alcohol to minors.

One of the senior employees read sinister motives in the raid, arguing that their competitors were unaffected even though they too sold alcohol.

“We have licences to sell all what we sell and we fail to understand why they picked on us. We have other supermarkets selling alcohol here in Thika but they have not been affected by this raid. They are still operating and selling alcohol even as we speak,” said the employee.

He wondered why the county government had to order the closure of the whole premises, regardless of the fact that there were so many perishable goods in stock that would definitely go bad.

“The store will run into a loss in the tune of millions of shillings. We were just baking bread but we were forced to put off the oven and halt the activity. We have ready food in our cafeteria notwithstanding other perishable goods such as milk. The loss is big,” he lamented.

Confused employees were caught unawares with majority of them not even having wind as to why they had to be ejected out of work.

“Imagine I was busy having lunch when they came in and forced us to abandon all what we were doing and move out. Our colleagues at the counters were forced to send away the clients they were serving and close down the computers. We now do not know our fate,” said one lady employee.

Reports elsewhere indicate that their other branch in Limuru also suffered the same fate this morning.

Society stores employs about 100 employees.

Last week, Governor Ferdinand Waititu ordered all bars within Kiambu County closed following the enactment into law of Kiambu County Alcoholic Drinks Control Bill 2017.

Waititu said all bars in the county did not have licences as far as the new law was concerned.