Orchard Road hasn’t been having a great time for these past few years.
With malls now spreading all over Singapore, Singaporeans have lesser and lesser reasons to congregate at this iconic shopping street.
So they had to make do with overseas visitors and gatherings for the youths, and all was well for a moment.
Until they met with an even more fearsome enemy: Covid-19 and the resulting new measures.
Even malls (which Orchard Road has a lot of) have new safe distancing measures they have to follow.
And with that, Orchard Road became like this.
The outside:
And inside of the malls:
By the way, this wasn’t taken before opening hours. It was allegedly taken between 6 and 7pm on 24 Mar 2020 (Tuesday).
And even fairs at Takashimaya, which is usually crowded, became this:
[email protected] and Orchard Central weren’t spared either.
Businesses Struggling To Stay Afloat
While Singapore has not officially entered a lockdown, the loss of visitor arrivals and the lack of Singaporeans heading out has hit business owners hard.
A frustrated stall owner at Changi Airport T4 took videos to show how barren the entire airport is and said she could barely make $100 a day.
But Singapore still lives up to its foodie reputation.
There is still a line at famous burger chain Shake Shack at Changi Airport.
Granted, the line is “thin” compared to pre-coronavirus days.
S’pore Government Looking To Help F&B & Retail Businesses
Singaporeans not heading out to have fun and spread the Covid-19 virus is something the government is hoping for.
However, they didn’t forget about the business owners.
In their latest support package for Singapore, aptly called the Resilience Package, they are hoping to help Singapore businesses tide over this tough period.
They’ve enhanced existing wage support for businesses where the government will pay for up to 75% of a local worker’s wages for nine months.
They’ve also enhanced existing rent waivers, suspended tax payments and froze government fees.
They hope that the landlords like Capitaland will think long term and generate some down-flow benefits for their tenants (read: F&B & retail owners renting a space with them).
How?
Let’s say a landlord saves $20,000 because of some benefit or support from the government.
Instead of keeping that extra $20,000 as profit, they could use that amount to generate some sort of rental rebate for tenants instead.
Meanwhile, let’s all be socially responsible and do whatever is necessary to tide over this period.
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You can do your part as a responsible citizen through helping out in contact tracing by downloading the TraceTogether app.
In the meantime, keep yourself updated by bookmarking MOH’s website here and registering for the Gov.sg’s WhatsApp service here.
