PETALING JAYA, Sept 3 — Mydin will extend operating hours at 50 of its branches this week to ease congestion and give shoppers more time to use their government aid, the retailer announced today.
Managing director Datuk Ameer Ali Mydin said the outlets will open from 7am until 1am between September 5 and 7, according to a report published today in Free Malaysia Today.
“This move is to give customers more time to shop, especially those who received the government’s one-off RM100 Sumbangan Asas Rahmah (SARA) aid and other assistance. Mydin remains committed to supporting the government’s efforts to ease the cost of living for the public by ensuring a sufficient supply of essential goods,” he said in a statement.
The initiative comes after technical problems with the MyKasih payment system on August 31 caused delays for shoppers redeeming the RM100 credit at several major hypermarkets, including Mydin, HeroMart, Lotus’s and Giant.
To fix this, the Finance Ministry has since upgraded the system to handle 15,000 transactions per minute — triple its previous limit — to avoid further bottlenecks during peak shopping periods.
At Mydin’s Subang Jaya outlet, additional measures have already been put in place, including 16 counters fitted with MyKad scanners provided by Yayasan MyKasih and extra staff at each counter, its operations manager S Vishnu Varthana told Berita Harian.
The RM100 aid, announced by Prime Minister Datuk Anwar Ibrahim in July, is credited into the MyKad of over 22 million Malaysians aged 18 and above.
It can be used at more than 7,300 participating outlets nationwide until December 31.
