FALSE: President Kenyatta has not suspended the sale of alcohol within the country indefinitely
The sale of alcoholic beverages has been suspended for 30 days
A tweet published by the People Daily claiming that President Uhuru Kenyatta has suspended the sale of alcoholic beverages in restaurants indefinitely is FALSE.
In a televised address to the nation on July 27, President Kenyatta banned the sale of alcoholic drinks and beverages in eateries and restaurants across the country for 30 days, and not indefinitely as the tweet claims. The ban took effect at midnight on the day of the announcement.
He also changed an existing order for the closure of restaurants from 8 pm to 7 pm. Bars will remain closed throughout the period and the countrywide curfew from 9 pm to 4 am will remain in place over the same period.
A presidential directive issued in May allowed restaurants and eateries to reopen and to sell alcoholic beverages to sit-in customers with a meal. The restrictions were eased through a presidential order on 6 July, but President Kenyatta warned he would not hesitate to re-escalate measures should a surge in infections be reported.
It is in this context that the president announced the additional containment measures, as part of government efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, which has infected over 17,900 people in the country including 299 fatalities as of July 28.
PesaCheck has looked into a tweet claiming that President Uhuru Kenyatta has suspended the sale of alcoholic beverages in the country indefinitely and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker James Okong’o and edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Enock Nyariki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
