Lulu Hypermarkets, which has 11 outlets with over 3,500 employees operating across Qatar, has implemented a number of measures for occupational safety and health of its employees and workers at worksites with the outbreak of coronavirus.
“The international health and hygiene standards ‘HACCP’, which is also recognised in Qatar, are in place at all outlets of Lulu Hypermarkets,” said Mohamad Althaf, Director of Lulu Hypermarkets. He said to avoid food intoxication, Lulu has been following a number of measures for many years for food handlers like washing hands, wearing face masks for food protection and routine medical checkup to detect the infectious diseases which are also helpful in this scenario.
“This year because of the epidemic of COVID-19, we have extended the safety measures to customers. We issued our safety protocol at the beginning of the outbreak of coronavirus as the customers were suggested to follow the social distancing putting stickers at 1.5 metre distance,” said Althaf. He said that Lulu has provided masks to everybody including staff and customers by believing in masking policy as about 70 per cent infection could be reduced by doing so.
“Following the universal masking policy, all staff of Lulu have to wear face masks. Compulsory temperature checking is also being conducted for everybody, first, it was introduced for staff and later extended to customers,” said Althaf.
He said that in a unique move to ensure the safety of staff and customers, Lulu placed safety barriers between cashier and customer at cash counters to make physical distance following the preventive measures to curb the infection of coronavirus.
“Every employee of Lulu should wash hands after every 45 minutes. An alert system was installed to remind them,” said Althaf. He said that Lulu is going to introduce pre-packed goods to avoid the crowd of customers at the shelves for example at the sections of fruits, vegetables, bakery and meat.
“Lulu plans to introduce automated sanitiser system making a tunnel for employees to walk through to get full body sanitised automatically,” said Althaf.
Source: The Peninsula
