SOPs for managing online vendors in the works

PETALING JAYA: As Muslims nationwide wait to embrace e-bazaars under the movement control order (MCO), Ramadan vendors have been warned to abide by the ruling.Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin said the bazaars, based on the e-hailing model, would focus on areas that had physical Ramadan stalls in previous years.

“E-bazaars for the Ramadan month will be very much at the local level, with local youth as riders.

“The standard operating procedures (SOPs) by the local councils will be used to monitor these e-bazaars to ensure the safety of vendors, delivery riders and consumers.“Local councils and the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) have regulations for managing physical Ramadan bazaars as they have been doing this for decades, ” said Zuraida.Ramadan bazaars are a source of income for thousands of small vendors nationwide.

“Once the e-bazaar has been set up, vendors would still have to produce proof of typhoid injections, Ramadan bazaar permits and such.

“We also want to provide cashless transactions as much as possible. We will also do away with Ramadan permit payments to ensure that commissions by e-bazaar operators remain low.

“Some e-hailers for online food deliveries tend to take a big chunk of the vendors and riders’ earnings.

“Runners can be local youth from that area provided they are registered with the e-bazaars with their licences and abide by the standard operating procedures on food handling and delivery, ” she said.

Today, DBKL will brief the Housing and Local Government, Health, Federal Territory and Home ministries on likely alternatives to physical Ramadan bazaars in Kuala Lumpur.

The Ramadan bazaar in Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman is the biggest in the country, with DBKL also having the most Ramadan bazaar vendors in its jurisdiction.

“We will decide on the exact SOPs for online bazaars after we present our proposals to the ministers at a special meeting in Putrajaya, ” said Kuala Lumpur mayor Datuk Nor Hisham Ahmad Dahlan yesterday.

On Tuesday, Nak Beli of the e-government services provider MyEG Services Bhd said it would introduce a new food service platform called Nak Makan.

The platform, with three phases, will run all the way to the Hari Raya Aidilfitri festivities.

In the first phase, Nak Makan’s e-Bazaar will see vendors in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Selangor list their offerings on its website for sale during the fasting month.

Nak Makan’s delivery partner MrSpeedy will collect the food and deliver it to customers. No deposit will be listed on the platform.

Meanwhile, the online platform Helpy has set up Ramadan e-bazaars in small towns in many states such as Johor, Terengganu, Negri Sembilan, Kedah and Sarawak.

Accessible via Facebook, the Bazaar Ramadan Online (BRO) is raring to take off in a big way.

Helpy founder and CEO Nur Iswandy Yakop said BRO would cover a maximum radius of 15km and the commission from the vendors and riders would be kept to a minimum.