Businesses in Oman resume with COVID-19 safety measures in place

Muscat: Some shops in Oman have opened in a limited capacity, following the lifting of a few of the precautions that had been put in place to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Under the instructions of the Supreme Committee for dealing with COVID-19, businesses and offices that work in fields such as electronics, stationery, vehicle and machine sales and maintenance, and mining were allowed to reopen, provided they followed the new rules for social distancing and hygiene that have been laid down.

Some office workers were waiting for the owners of buildings in which their offices were located to completely sanitise their premises before returning to work. An office manager said, “I went to the office today to see if everything was okay, but our landlord told me to go back home as he still hadn’t finished sanitising the place.

“We of course will continue to work from home, but it is not the same as working in an office,” he added. “Once a complete sanitisation is done and an inspection of the premises have been completed, only then have we been asked to return to our offices. We have been told this will be done by this week.”

As part of these safety measures, businesses operating in the above sectors are not allowed to have customers enter their shops. Customers can pick up their products and/or orders from these shops, or arrange for them to be delivered today.

However, while visiting service centres that perform vehicle maintenance jobs such as oil changes, tyre maintenance and vehicle repairs, a maximum of two customers can be in the shop at a time.

Of importance to many in the country was the reopening of money exchange houses in the Sultanate, with a manager at one of them telling Times of Oman, “The staff are to take adequate measures of wearing masks, gloves, and maintain a distance of 1.5 metres between each other. Customers within the branch have to maintain 1.5 metre distance. All of these are general recommendations that need to be followed, as our branches have begun functioning as of the 29th of this month.”

As part of the instructions to reopen issued by the Supreme Committee, some of the measures companies are expected to follow include avoiding the transfer of employees between branches, provision of appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE), sterilisation of all common devices and electronic equipment, and checking whether employees and clients show symptoms of any disease, before they are allowed to enter the premises.

Those employees that do show signs of sickness will be asked to go home and stay in isolation, and to avoid them falling sick, both their places of work and their accommodation need to be regularly cleaned and disinfected, particularly those areas that often come into contact with humans, including drawer handles, doors, tables and chairs.

Vehicles used to transport large numbers of workers to and from their workplace must also be attended to.