Panel SA: More than 5,500 mall stores close due to lack of employees after the advance of the omni

More than 5,500 shopping mall stores across the country had to temporarily close their doors due to lack of employees infected with Covid or the flu between January 14 and 20, according to a survey by Abrasce (an association that brings together shopping malls).

Other more than 5,000 shopkeepers have been working with reduced opening hours to circumvent the short-lived teams. The volume of establishments impacted by closing or reduced hours corresponds to approximately 10% of the 111 thousand stores in the 600 malls associated with the entity, according to data from Abrasce.

“Faced with a contingent of around 111 thousand stores in the country, we have more than 90% of the establishments operating normally, which allows operations to continue taking place in order to guarantee the quality of service”, says Glauco Humai, president of Abrasce .

Mauricio Romiti, director at Nassau Empreendimentos, which manages malls like Center 3, on Avenida Paulista in São Paulo, says that malls are treating cases individually, according to each scenario.

“Many stores do not have employees to cover the entire shift. Shopkeepers in this situation are reducing the hours to open a shift. Often, the store owner is covering the employee”, says Romiti.

This month, as anticipated by the SA Panel, the association of shopping mall stores Ablos proposed to reduce the opening hours of establishments by a few weeks to deal with the lack of employees, but it was contested by Alshop, another entity in the sector, which covers bigger size.

Romiti says that the flexibility adopted today by the malls differs from the proposal made by Ablos, because it evaluates cases individually, as needed, without a general change in the time of operation of the business.

with Andressa Motter e Ana Paula Branco