Seattle, April 14 (IANS) Amazon will soon allow third-party sellers to start ship nonessential items to its warehouses as it ramps up efforts to supply the essential items in the challenging COVID-19 times.

In a statement to CNBC, the ecommerce giant said: "We appreciate our selling partners' patience as we prioritize products for customers and adhere to extensive health and safety measures in our fulfillment centers to protect our employees. We will share more details with our selling partners later this week".

After filling 100,000 new jobs announced in March, e-commerce giant Amazon is planning to add 75,000 more, to help meet surge in demand due to the CVID-19 crisis.

As more and more people rely on home deliveries to source the supplies of their daily needs, Amazon said it is "looking for talent in every community where we operate."

To help its employees during the crisis, Amazon also increased pay for hourly employees by $2 per hour in the U.S., Canadian dollar 2 per hour in Canada, and 2 euros per hour in many EU countries.

"We doubled the regular hourly base pay for every overtime hour worked and are offering extra time off with full pay for those diagnosed with COVID-19," Amazon said in a blog post on Monday.

"Our top concern is ensuring the health and safety of our employees. We made over 150 process updates to help protect employees -- from enhanced cleaning and social distancing measures to piloting new efforts like using disinfectant fog in our New York fulfillment centre," Amazon said.

The company said it distributed personal protective gear, such as masks for its employees, and implemented temperature checks across its operations worldwide.

Amazon said it has zero tolerance for price gouging in its stores.
"We're focusing on high-priority items to ensure the fastest delivery of household staples, medical supplies, and other high demand products coming into our fulfillment centres," the company said.

"We're vigorously combating price gouging to help protect customers, help ensure fair pricing, and combat those seeking to profit off the COVID-19 crisis," it added.

--IANS gb/na