: India’s biggest consumer goods companies, including Procter & Gamble, ITC Hindustan Unilever , Britannia, Nestle , Mondelez and Tata Consumer , have come together with the government to convert millions of neighbourhood kirana stores into sanitised retail outlets selling daily essentials.These kiranas will be called Suraksha Stores and registered on the government’s Aarogya Setu app. The companies will help the kirana staff implement safety norms such as social distancing and sanitisation, and also supply them sanitisers, masks and gloves.The government is targeting to bring 1 million stores under this category within 45 days. As of Tuesday night, consumer goods companies have adopted 1 lakh outlets.Consumer affairs ministry secretary Pawan Agarwal confirmed the move. “This voluntary effort is a welcome development. Presently, on a pilot basis, 12 companies have taken this forward and over a lakh outlets have already been registered,” Agarwal told ET.The group of companies, which currently also includes Marico, Johnson & Johnson, Godrej and Colgate Palmolive, is called the Coalition of Responsible Enterprises (CoRE) against Covid. The programme has so far generated interest from more than 75 companies.“As an industry, we will scale the initiative across the entire supply chain, community and consumer-facing last-mile delivery, besides following robust certified training processes, to contain the spread of Covid-19,” P&G India chief executive Madhusudan Gopalan said, while addressing a videoconference that was attended among others by government officials.An HUL spokesperson said the company was implementing it in the states allotted to it through its “network of distributor salesmen”, while a spokesperson for hotels-to-consumer-goods group ITC said it was happy to participate in the programme.Dabur India CEO Mohit Malhotra said the maker of Real juices and Vatika shampoo had initiated the process of reaching out to the retail outlets and would ensure that each retail store complied with a health and safety checklist. “This is a pathbreaking initiative by the consumer affairs ministry to convert the neighbourhood kirana stores into sanitised retail outlets selling daily essentials. We are also extending this to cover Ayurveda outlets across India,” Malhotra said.The second phase of the exercise, the Suraksha Circle, will cover the entire supply chain of companies.Some cash-and-carry companies are also involved.Metro Cash & Carry India managing director Arvind Mediratta said: “The programme involves companies in the ecosystem helping to create safe places to shop. Apart from the other protocols, this includes waste bins outside stores for disposal of masks and tissues.”A spokesperson for Walmart India said the company was keen to participate in the programme within the guidelines of foreign direct investment rules for cash and carry companies.The FMCG companies have been assigned states. The protocols include maintaining social distancing of 1.5 metres outside the shops as well as billing counters, ensuring use of sanitisers or hand wash by consumers before entering the shops, provision of masks to all staff and sanitisation of high-contact areas at least twice a day.