I was upset over what a competitor of ours stated in what seems to attack us.
The background is that in Victoria now, as in most of Australia from the 30th April, in public places, you must use to track people for COVID, an automated system linked into the VIC state medical system. This means that manual and many backyard systems are no longer acceptable. I notified VANA on Friday to advise them that they should tell their members that many of their COVID tracking Forms on their windows in the front need changing. The system which I recommend that their members use is guesttracker. This is because it is approved. In practice, it has proven easy to use. Plus, it is free. It also has a growth path if they want to pay a small fee with some handy functions. However, my competitor immediately released a notification that retailers can take down their COVID tracking notice off the front window because it is not required in Victoria for retailers. I think this advice they gave is probably wrong.
Firstly I want to say here that the enemy is not the State Government, nor the health inspectors but COVID. We are all in this together.
Okay, the relevant document they quoted is here which is from the Chief Health Officer of Victoria operating under his emergency power.
In this document, it states bluntly that.
So anyone in your shop for more than 15 minutes except as stated in clause (9) must be recorded. Note where it states customers, and maintenance and delivery workers. {emphasis added}
Now clause (9) states.
So only when there are customers, only where it is not practical to do so {emphasis added} are you exempt under 7.
A customer in your shop where they rule it is practical to do so must be registered. Also the maintenance and delivery workers above have to be registered. So would say a sales rep from a card company if they came in for 15 minutes to say hello.
Failing to do this, for a person in Victoria, can get you 120 penalty points which is about a $20,000 fine. If you run your shop as a company, you can be up for about $100,000.
I believe that this situation is similar in the rest of Australia too.
So our advice is to keep your COVID QR tracking sheets up but make sure you use an approved system for your state.
