The crowd at Geylang Serai market shrunk to less than half yesterday, the first day that new measures to improve safe distancing kicked in at popular markets, said Environment and Water Resources Minister Masagos Zulkifli.
This was a marked improvement for the market, which was the worst performing one in terms of adhering to safe distancing rules designed to stop the spread of Covid-19, Mr Masagos said in an interview over video conferencing platform Zoom.
A new move to restrict entry to four popular wet markets, including Geylang Serai, based on the last digit of shoppers' NRIC numbers took effect yesterday. Shoppers whose NRIC last digit is an even number (zero, two, four, six and eight) are allowed entry only on even dates of the month, while those with an odd-numbered last digit (one, three, five, seven and nine) can shop only on odd dates of the month.
Said Mr Masagos, who is also the Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs: "If you look at the total number of people who (were) in the market and queueing, Geylang Serai market (was) the highest.
"But I will say that this morning, when we started the odd and even entry, Geylang Serai market is one of the best performing. The number of people in the queue has reduced tremendously."
For the past few weeks, Mr Masagos has been regularly posting on his Facebook account the situation at the Geylang Serai market amid the circuit breaker measures.
These measures, which have been in place since April 7, require people to keep a distance from one another so as to protect public health and curb the spread of the coronavirus in the community.
While other markets or supermarkets might have queues, Mr Masagos said yesterday that the queues in Geylang Serai were exceptionally long because people were lingering in the market. On some days, people had to queue for at least 30 minutes, which he said was a result of people not planning before going to the market and shopping from stall to stall to find the best deals.
This created large gatherings in the markets and put people in danger of getting infected by the coronavirus, running the risk of making community spread worse.
"When we have such big gatherings like that, the risk of infection from... letting our guard down for a moment, and putting our hands on surfaces which could be (contaminated), and then rubbing our eyes, is high. That is the beginning of how we get infected," he warned.
Hariz Baharudin
