PETALING JAYA, Sept 15 (Sin Chew Daily) — Malaysian Hairdressing Association (MHA) president Michael Poh urges the government to lift the 1-hour restriction for hair salons to complete their services, as per the latest standard operating procedures unveiled by the domestic trade and consumer affairs ministry today.

Poh told Sin Chew Daily the 1-hour restriction is unnecessary now that all customers have been fully vaccinated.

“This is what we really can’t understand. While we could understand the 1-hour restriction imposed during the first MCO when everyone was not yet vaccinated, the situation now is different!”

By limiting the service to only one hour, it means some of the services may not be delivered within the short time frame, such as hair perming.

Poh said even restaurants can now serve dine-in customers without any restriction in the number of people, hairdressing salons should not be subjected to the 1-hour restriction as hairdressers will be putting on face masks, face shields and gloves while customers have their masks on.

“One hour will never be enough for some of the services. It will be very rushy. We have plenty of SOPs to follow such as putting on gloves which requires time.

“We hope the government will be more lenient and fully open up like in Thailand and Singapore without any time restriction.”

Meanwhile, Persatuan Pusat Kecantikan Malaysia (PPKM) president Jade Fong said the government’s latest SOPs have allowed the beauty industry to provide all the services it used to provide.

Manicure services, for instance, can resume operation now instead of waiting until the fourth phase of the national recovery plan.

She said all the employees in the beauty industry in Klang Valley had been fully vaccinated. However, she said the association’s members would still be constantly reminded to enforce the SOPs and ensure that their employees do not share food or gather during lunch break.

“While in the past we might have two employees having lunch together, we now have to make arrangements for the staff to eat separately while observing safe social distancing in order to minimize the risk of infection.

She also said since last year the beauty industry had been told to complete their services within one hour, and as such the operators had modified their services to keep them within the one-hour time frame.