Malls ready with safety measures in place to welcome back customers in Pune

PUNE: Malls in the city on Friday said they were ready with all standard Covid-19 safety precautions as they prepare to throw their doors open after more than four months.

All malls have in place a detailed standard operating procedure, including a real-time customer density count to ensure crowd management, sanitization mats to disinfect footwear, and not permitting visitors who have been under home quarantine, among others.
Escalators have been marked to ensure social distancing, while signs have been put up inside washrooms to avoid crowding. In some malls, elevators have been equipped with a system to operate them using feet. Staffers in personal protection equipment kits will sanitize the premises on a daily basis.
Surjit Singh Rajpurohit, chief operating officer of Amanora Mall in Hadapsar told TOI that they were eager to restart business, though the situation was not ideal. “Malls opening up is definitely a good start for us after over four months of closure. However, restrictions on cinema halls, food courts/restaurants is still not good for business. The reason why many people visit a mall is for the entire package — multiplex, food court and shopping,” Rajpurohit said.
“That said, people would definitely visit malls for their elaborate shopping centres and the added experience. All the safety measures have been put in place at our facility. In fact, not a single case has been reported so far in which the source of infection has been identified from a mall that had reopened during the unlock phase,” he claimed.
Arun Arora, centre director, Phoenix Marketcity, said they have decided to operate during a restricted window for the moment. “The mall’s timings have been initially fixed from 11am to 7pm [the official guidelines which allow malls to operate between 9am and 7pm],” Arora said, adding, “Among other safety measures, every store in the mall will have its own limit of how many customers will be allowed inside at a time. That limit will be displayed at the entrance of the store, along with safety measures that the store would be following. This system of limited customers/people will also apply to washrooms.” Arora said.
He added that the mall has upgraded its cameras with artificial intelligence software to help them better monitor crowds on the premises. “This will help us monitor in real-time the number of customers in the mall at any given time,” Arora said. “This number or count will also be displayed at all the entry points, so that even the customers will know the number of people in the mall when s/he enters,” he added.
Malls across the country had shut when the first phase of the nationwide lockdown was imposed towards the end of March.