By Kay del Rosario
On Friday night, a rare sight greeted supermarket shoppers in Singapore. Shelves were wiped out of daily essentials, and long snaking queues formed at cashier counters.
These scenes followed the Government announcement that the Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) level had been raised to Orange over the global coronavirus outbreak.
Although the sudden surge in demand was unexpected, NTUC FairPrice has quickly responded to the situation and increased the volume of daily essentials being sent to the stores by three times. Delivery trips have also been doubled.
“At this point in time, we have over 9 million toilet rolls. We have about 1.2 million packs of instant noodles. We have over 4 million kilos of rice, presently. And stocks continue to come in,” said FairPrice Group CEO Seah Kian Peng.
FairPrice employs an ongoing strategy of source diversification, working with suppliers from multiple countries, to ensure the community has a stable supply of daily essentials at affordable prices.
Nevertheless, in a Facebook post on Saturday, Mr Seah also reminded Singaporeans to only buy what they needed.
“There is no need to create a stockpile at home because if everyone is trying to do it on the same day and at the same time, it adds strain to the system,” he said.
For high demand daily essentials like rice, instant noodles, and toilet paper, FairPrice has imposed a cap on the number of items shoppers can buy:
· Paper products – 4 packs per customer
· Rice – 2 bags per customer
· Instant noodles – 4 pillow packs per customer
· Vegetables – $50 worth per customer
This is to ensure that more people get access to these products. By Sunday, supermarket shelves were back to normal.
Have you shopped at FairPrice On and found some daily essentials were out of stock? Fret not! The team is working hard and expanding operations to get these high demand items back online.
