Concern for shopper safety at big retailers

SHOPPERS at bigbox stores — and the businesses themselves — have been reminded of the importance of social distancing under Alert Level 2 conditions.

In Queenstown, some shoppers have expressed concern at busy scenes inside Kmart.

Under instructions for large retailers, Kmart is not required to take customer details if it ensures social distancing of 2m.

Kmart customer Nicki Corson claimed there were ‘‘crazy‘‘ and ‘‘dangerous’’ scenes inside the store this week.

‘‘The people in there are trying to keep away from each other, but there are just so many people in there.’’

Her concerns were echoed by Fiona Sudden, who said people had become ‘‘blase about distancing’’.

‘‘It’s hard to social distance in there. . . there are those that stand back out of the way, but others who don’t.’’

However, Celia Waser was ‘‘not too worried about it’’, noting the limited number of active cases of Covid19 in the South.

She said people were consciously aware of the need to social distance and were using common sense.

Southern District Health Board medical officer Dr Anura Jayasinghe reminded people ‘‘Queenstown was hit particularly hard at the beginning of the Covid19 outbreak’’.

She said if the resort was to avoid a recurrence, people needed to take the ‘‘situation seriously’’ and follow guidelines.

A media spokeswoman for Kmart said the Queenstown store had a limit of 237 people, and staff were counting customers in and out.

She said staff were doing their ‘‘very best’’ to ensure 2m distancing and were ‘‘monitoring closely’’ to consider whether to ‘‘evolve our policies’’.