Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West is en­cour­ag­ing gov­ern­ment work­ers to ac­cess Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP) be­ing pro­vid­ed.

Yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter West launched the as­sess­ment phase for the re­view of the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme in the Civ­il Ser­vice spear­head­ed by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer at the Hy­att Re­gency.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, West said im­proved de­liv­ery in the pub­lic ser­vice hinges on em­ploy­ees do­ing their best and be­ing at their best.

“One of the ar­eas that we have been try­ing to im­prove is the pro­vi­sion of ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient ser­vice de­liv­ery through strong, mod­ern pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions. But this can on­ly be achieved with staff that are healthy, re­silient, and mo­ti­vat­ed. The Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme is just one of the ways through which this can be achieved,” she said.

She said while EAP ser­vices have been in ex­is­tence in min­istries and de­part­ments for over 20 years, they are not be­ing ful­ly utilised by em­ploy­ees who may need them the most.

“So even as we ac­knowl­edge that this is one Civ­il Ser­vice and we seek to move away from our siloed ap­proach to deal­ing with is­sues and in how we serve the pub­lic, as lead­ers we have to en­sure that pro­grammes as po­ten­tial­ly im­pact­ful as the EAP are not just avail­able to some, but must be made avail­able to all,” said West.

She ac­knowl­edged that the de­mands on work­ers have in­creased.

“We have been faced with eco­nom­ic down­turn, a glob­al pan­dem­ic, geopo­lit­i­cal threats, and oth­er is­sues, and the Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing tire­less­ly to re­verse the neg­a­tive im­pacts of these is­sues on the pop­u­la­tion. In so do­ing, pub­lic of­fi­cers have been asked to dig deep and give more of them­selves, both dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and since, in sup­port of the re­cov­ery and growth ef­forts be­ing un­der­tak­en by min­istries and de­part­ments,” she said.

The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment has set a ro­bust de­vel­op­ment agen­da to­wards the achieve­ment of so­cio-eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty and the at­tain­ment of de­vel­oped coun­try sta­tus by the year 2030 how­ev­er, non-pro­gres­sive at­ti­tudes and be­hav­iours that show up as low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and neg­a­tive work ethos among the gen­er­al work­ing pop­u­la­tion in pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions are chal­lenges that this Gov­ern­ment has to deal with.