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When Oslo announced new crown measures and stores closed from Tuesday, Oslo Handelsstands Forening (OHF) responded by demanding the closure in neighboring municipalities as well.
SHOPS CLOSED: The municipality of Oslo will close further from Tuesday.
Illustration photography: Terje Pedersen / NTB
– When the message came that all stores and restaurants were to close for two weeks, this was dramatically experienced, and I was so frustrated that the wording became too strong, writes CEO Bjørn Næss at OHF in an apology email to NTB.
Councilor Raymond Johansen (Labor Party) announced on Sunday about the new measures, which among other things mean shutting down parts of the commercial industry from Tuesday and fourteen days earlier.
The reason is high infection rates, where a large proportion is the most infectious corona mutated variant in the UK.
“Dramatically”
Only retail will be closed, the Oslo municipality told NTB on Sunday.
This means that service professions that operate in accordance with already strict national infection control measures, such as hairdressers and other companies with personal contact, are not affected.
Oslo Handelsstands Forening emphasizes that their argument has always been that commerce and restaurants must be open and with good infection control “as shops and restaurants have shown they can do”.
– The austerity measures for trade and catering in Oslo are dramatic. We are now desperate because of the unfair distortion of competition that this leads to, and not least because of the increased mobility that this generates, says Næss.
Billions of losses
– We must give the citizens of Oslo the opportunity to buy in their own municipality and believe that this should be solved by keeping trade and catering open in Oslo, he continues.
According to Virke, the closure of shopping centers and stores in the Oslo region so far this year has cost the commercial industry billions.
– For the whole of eastern Norway, the turnover of between two and three billion crowns has been lost or shifted, says commercial director Harald J. Andersen in Virke to Dagens Næringsliv.
