Mall goers could be staring at the entrance and not permitted in if the mall is too crowded, this is the advice given by Senior Security Minister Datuk Seri Sabri Yaakob on his daily press briefing.

He has observed shopping malls to be overcrowded at times and hopes the mall operators take note on this and act accordingly. Ever since these premises were allowed to resume, there has been a steady increase of patrons visiting them. Some malls are back to pre-Covid days with visitors  locked down since March taking the opportunity to get out from their houses.

Malaysians are known to spend much of their time at the malls, in fact the country has one of the highest number of shopping malls in the region. The Government has raised red flag over the rise of positive Covid-19 cases of late with 13 clusters detected in just 2 weeks. After a series of lockdown easing, the government task force in charge of overseeing the pandemic is mulling on pulling back some of the relaxation. Malls are currently under microscope and should the need arise, actions could be taken.

Guidelines are in place to keep crowd acceptable within space limits but if you head over to a popular mall in Kuala Lumpur you will notice the lax in how crowd is managed. No distancing on escalators, more than 4 in the elevator and even if there’s a queue distancing is not practiced.