Where have all the trolleys gone? This is the question for which police and authorities are seeking answers.
Last December 13, NTUC FairPrice at Block 36 Holland Drive faced a blank parking section for trolleys as all the carts were missing. The outlet needed to put up a sign informing the customers on the said incident as well as apologising for the inconvenience.
The store is opened round the clock. This leads to speculations that all the trolleys were actually stolen during operation hours. CCTV footages still need to be clearly looked into in order to help the investigation.
FairPrice cannot comment more as the police have not yet completed their investigations on the matter. Business at the supermarket is not disrupted at all for trolleys from other outlets were transferred to the store.
Unreturned trolleys are commonly seen around corners in Singapore. This has been an ongoing problem throughout the years. Supermarkets are confronted with customers pushing trolleys and not conscientiously returning to where they got it.
Source: reddit r/singapore
Some netizens cracked jokes about these stolen trolleys, that it would be another crime on the list.
Source: reddit r/singapore
But even so, there are still responsible customers making sure that the trolley they have used will end up to where it should belong—the supermarket.
Source: reddit r/singapore
NTUC FairPrice has already carried through several measures addressing this need in the past. One of which is an initiative called the Trolley Enforcement Project, wherein enforcement officers were stationed educating shoppers not to wheel trolleys away from the store premises and to return them responsibly.
Another proposal has been brought up in recent years, like requiring shoppers to sign up for trolleys from a computerised station within supermarkets by scanning their National Registration Identity Card, driver’s license or other IDs using a card reader. Through this, store management would be able to monitor the whereabouts of missing trolleys and would then impose finds against the irresponsible shopper and worst, prohibit from buying at the supermarket those who repeatedly abandon the trolleys.
The Holland Drive outlet is one of the many outlets of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) FairPrice Cooperative, the largest chain of supermarkets in Singapore.