Shopping insanity unfolds
Stabbing and violence continues
A SUPERMARKET employee has been stabbed at a Woolworths store as violence continues to occur at shopping centres across the country amid coronavirus panic buying.
Police said a 37-year-old man was collecting trolleys at the Victorian store when he was approached by an unknown man and stabbed to the lower body yesterday afternoon.
He was airlifted to a Melbourne hospital from Rosebud with stab wounds in a serious but stable condition while police continue to hunt for the assailant. The incident comes as seniors and pension card holders have tried to make the most of a dedicated shopping hour set up by a major supermarket chain for vulnerable people in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak.
People with government-issued concession cards yesterday flocked to Woolworths supermarkets for the dedicated shopping hour which runs nationally from 7am to 8am on weekdays, before opening to everyone else.
Not everyone was happy. At Woolworths Marrickville in Sydney’s west shoppers were complaining that some stock wasn’t available.
Woolworths fresh food director Paul Harker said the initiative had proved popular yesterday, but agreed there were still shortages of toilet paper and pasta.
“Our supply chains are working 24/7 to make sure they get product to our stores,” he said.
More broadly, Mr Harker said there was no shortage of goods in Australia. “It is a logistics exercise of moving the product to get it back into stores with the pace and demand we’re seeing,” he added.
The Woolworths shopping hour program will be reviewed later this week to see if it can be improved.
Panic buying sparked by the spread of Covid-19 in Australia has meant supermarkets are stripped of toilet paper, pasta, rice, frozen food as well as tinned and other dried goods.
The issue has caused stress and frustration among elderly shoppers, many of whom find it difficult to make frequent visits to supermarkets for essential goods.