Porto City Council draws up document with recommendations and rules to support merchants on their return

The Municipality of Porto has prepared a document to support merchants in this new phase. "Porto, Comércio com Segurança" [Porto, Commerce with Safety] compiles all the measures and recommendations that come into effect as of this Monday, the 4th. It is available online and will also be available to street merchants during next week.

The Economy, Tourism and Commerce Department, under the responsibility of councillor Ricardo Valente, produced "Porto, Comércio com Segurança", a manual with the guidelines and norms directed to the city's street commerce, with the objective of helping merchants to adapt their commercial spaces and ensure that this process of returning to the new normality is governed by a set of rules and guidelines, which mitigate the possible contagion of Covid-19 in the scope of this activity.

In the document, the Municipality seeks to anticipate and prevent risky behavior by citizens, including merchants and their employees, now that, with the end of the State of Emergency, there may eventually be a false perception of security. 

Thus, considering that from tomorrow, commercial establishments may start to open in a phased manner, depending on the nature of the business and the area they occupy, the document prepared by Porto City Council begins precisely by presenting the stores reopening calendar, stipulated by the Government.

The compendium "Porto, Comércio com Segurança" also recalls the need for those responsible for commercial establishments to have their contingency plans for infection by SARS-CoV-2 active, in conjunction with occupational health and safety services. Rules with regard to schedules and work organization and general preventive measures are also recalled.

In addition, in this document, merchants are clarified as to the specific precautions regarding payments; hygiene and cleaning of spaces and surfaces; norms to be respected in priority service. They can also, from this source, obtain information about the specific care to consider in certain businesses, namely those that sell clothing, accessories or footwear, or grocery stores, fruit stores, cheese shops, bakeries, pastry shops, among other establishments. 

Finally, the Municipality clarifies which procedures are recommended in case the customer requests the complaints book and also leaves the reservation that exceptions to the adoption of rules and recommendations may be considered, which must be requested to the channels defined for this purpose.

In order to ensure maximum compliance with this set of rules and to minimize the possible negative effects that the resumption of commercial activity may have in the recovery from the health crisis, inspection actions will be taken to ensure compliance with these rules.