It seems mini- and supermarkets will not reopen until Tuesday, despite the Monday/Wednesday/Friday grocery shopping scheme proclaimed by national decree on Sunday for a three-week period. Evidently nobody foresaw that the following week would have three holidays, namely King’s Day on Monday, the Carnival holiday on Thursday and Labour Day on Friday.
Otherwise, how does one explain that it wasn’t until Friday afternoon government announced its intention to honour King’s Day and Labour Day by switching to shopping on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, thereby skipping the Carnival holiday with obviously no related celebration planned this year. They were still working on the legal basis, as the relevant decree probably required adjusting,
By the time most people heard the news, food stores would have probably closed, so anyone counting on replenishing supplies Monday will just have to wait an extra day or use a delivery service. The latter is not the end of the world by any means, but does illustrate some of the logistical challenges and inconveniences the coronavirus measures present.
The current three-day schedule entails certain complications for the businesses involved, like having to – on a daily basis – change from regular to delivery-only shopping. It also creates a bit of an unlevel playing field with smaller groceries not able to offer such service every other day.
Perhaps, depending on COVID-19 test results, the third and final week of the current partial lockdown can be used to experiment with daily openings and adding other companies. That could give especially those exempted from the payroll subsidy an opportunity to at least try to make a buck again.
The first round of this assistance for employers to prevent layoffs will be paid with recently-received pending Dutch liquidity support. A request for NAf. 254 million in financing has been submitted to the Netherlands to cover the full three-month socioeconomic relief programme.
Going forward it would appear wise to make the effort more inclusive by – for example – reducing the salary compensation percentage from 80 to 70 per cent so the help may reach a larger number of people.
