Key Sentence:
- Mr. Price’s CEO, Mark Blair, yesterday said that Retailers, with the help of their employees and partners.
- Are working for the last ten days to recuperate and work after the riots.
Yesterday, Mr. Price said the damage from robbery had not increased significantly since the initial announcement and totaled 111 stores. At one point, more than 500 of the group’s stores had temporarily closed, but that has now reduced significantly to 20 temporary store closures, the company said.
Mr. Price is the latest retailer to take the costs of civil unrest very seriously. More than 300 Shoprite Holdings and Pick n Pay stores have been vandalized by looters and burned to the ground in last week’s riots in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) said in separate statements on Tuesday.
Woolworths said Monday that 11 shops were looted and badly damaged, including nine of KZN’s 11 stores and two in Gauteng during last week’s chaos.
Retailers, including Pepkor, Massmart, Clicks, Foschini Group and Truworths, also said their stores were affected, and the amount of looting and damage costs were affected. Silent. Most of the damage and destruction occurred in KwaZulu-Natal province and to a lesser extent in Gauteng province and did not spread throughout South Africa.
Mr. Blair said, “I am very grateful to all of our employees and partners for their efforts over the past ten days. It was a great team effort to get us back up and running quickly in the affected areas. The community’s proactive response and entrepreneurial tenacity are proof that the actions of a few do not determine the course of the majority.
Great efforts are underway to ensure that the group’s distribution center is not affected, and from Tuesday 20 July, this facility, including all logistics and distribution activities, will be fully operational. The port of Durban experiences some congestion, but this is increasing. Expected to relax as all facilities are already operational,” said the retailer.
Price said headquarters staff worked remotely during the unrest and have now returned to their respective workplaces under the Level 4 Covid-19 blocking protocol.
A detailed examination is carried out to inform the insured event and determine the robbed business’s resumption in individual cases. The group said it intends to reopen the looted shops but is being investigated based on the specific circumstances of each store location and the conditions of each shopping center where the shops are located.