SINGAPORE, Aug 21 — Tangs’ decision to allow employees and brand partners to wear religious headgear while working on its premises will take effect on Friday (Aug 21), the department store said in a statement.

The company’s statement comes after it received a lot of flak over a recent incident reported by TODAY, in which a sales promoter at Tangs was asked to remove her hijab to work in the department store.

Scores of netizens have left angry comments on Tang’s Facebook page since the report was published, with many saying they would stop shopping at the iconic department store.

Over the past two days, President Halimah Yacob and several politicians also weighed in, calling on employers to review their policies and eliminate discrimination at the workplace.

"We hear you, and we agree,” Tangs said in its statement today. 

"As a Singaporean company with a diverse, and multi-racial workforce, we must respect cultural and religious practices and requirements on all accounts.

"We have made an immediate change to ensure a policy that uniformly respects all our employees and our brand partners.”

The statement added that the Tangs corporate office and back-of-house colleagues are already allowed to wear religious headgear. The company is therefore making this standard practice, to include all customer-facing front liners from today.

"Our employees, and our brand partners are now provided the flexibility to wear their religious headgear, should they choose to. Thank you for helping us do better,” it said. — TODAY