It’s actually been a while since my last visit to a Ramadan bazaar, or as Rory insists, a “PARAM“. And it’s all due to the COVID-19 pandemic changing how we buy food during fasting month. However, there are a couple of Ramadan bazaars in the Klang Valley that have introduced interesting safety measures to help make the market area a safer place to shop—using a Crowd Controlled System (CCS).
Journalist Fareez Azman tweeted that the Ramadan bazaars in Kelana Jaya and Kota Damansara both use a Crowd Controlled System—an infrared system that helps control the visitor capacity of a bazaar. It’s used to track the number of people entering and leaving in real-time, with results being displayed on a screen instantly.
With the CCS, the PJ city council officials are able to make sure that the crowd size at the bazaars doesn’t exceed the maximum capacity—as stipulated by the current SOP. The information displayed on the screen will let visitors know how long the wait is before they can go into the bazaar space. And if too many people go in at once, a siren sound will be played.
Additionally, the screen also shows a “traffic light” where it will show visitors a red light, yellow light, or green light. If you’re waiting to get in, you’d have to make sure that the light turns green. Yellow means “caution”, while red means “wait”.
“A camera, as well as a sensor, will record every entry and exit. The number of visitors will also be shown through the system. Such a cool system!” wrote the PJ city council officials on Facebook.
Implementing a fancy system like the CCS to popular Ramadan bazaar locations is a pretty neat idea—especially as a way to control the amount of people going in. Twitter users have also reported that other bazaar locations, like in Taman Medan, can be extremely crowded—and it can be difficult to control COVID-19 safety measures without something like a CCS.
