Carisa Lee

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Allyson West will meet with Pub­lic Ser­vice stake­hold­ers on Mon­day to dis­cuss how em­ploy­ees will op­er­ate at gov­ern­ment of­fices for the next three weeks.

This fol­lows the reim­ple­men­ta­tion of a ro­ta­tion­al 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty sys­tem in the Pub­lic Ser­vice to curb the spread of COVID-19.

“I’m ac­tu­al­ly wait­ing on the PS (Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary) to set up a meet­ing with the CPO, DPA and HoPS to dis­cuss and agree an ap­proach,”

Guardian Me­dia was able to get a copy of a memo sent to staff at gov­ern­ment of­fices out­lin­ing the new work­flow. The email, ti­tled ‘Work arrange­ments fol­low­ing lat­est COVID re­stric­tions’, said with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, all ex­ist­ing work-from-home and al­ter­na­tive work­ing arrange­ments are sus­pend­ed and em­ploy­ees shall turn out on the days that they are ros­tered to be in of­fice, as fail­ure to do so will com­pro­mise the 50 per cent turnout.

Head of di­vi­sions were di­rect­ed to work out with their staff the ro­ta­tion arrange­ments and are re­quired to sub­mit their di­vi­sion­al ros­ters to the di­rec­tor of the HR Di­vi­sion for not­ing.

How­ev­er, this ro­ta­tion does not ap­ply to man­age­r­i­al staff, as they are to re­port to work on a dai­ly ba­sis to fa­cil­i­tate the gov­er­nance, over­sight and sup­port of ser­vice de­liv­ery across the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

This mea­sure was im­ple­ment­ed last year af­ter re­ports of cit­i­zens be­ing un­able to con­duct busi­ness at gov­ern­ment of­fices sur­faced. West then said that em­ploy­ees did not un­der­stand the 50 per cent work­flow.

She said, “What we saw hap­pen­ing was that peo­ple took that to mean that they were on­ly re­quired to work 50 per cent of the time. You would go in­to pub­lic of­fices, and you would not be prop­er­ly at­tend­ed to be­cause there were not peo­ple there to at­tend to you.”

That seemed to be the is­sue out­side Li­cens­ing Of­fice on Wright­son Road yes­ter­day.

Those out­side said they were wait­ing in line for ap­prox­i­mate­ly three hours. One man, who want­ed to re­main anony­mous said, “Af­ter lin­ing up all morn­ing, when I al­most reach to the front of the line, they close off for lunch, now I have to wait til one.”

An­oth­er per­son told Guardian Me­dia she got a call on Thurs­day ask­ing if she was ho­n­our­ing her ap­point­ment. She said ‘yes’ but when she went to the venue yes­ter­day morn­ing, she still had to wait.

Some­one else in line said af­ter lin­ing up all morn­ing, she fi­nal­ly reached in front of the line but just be­fore her turn to en­ter the build­ing, they closed off for lunch and she was in­struct­ed to wait an­oth­er hour.

West said she had her views on how the Pub­lic Ser­vice should op­er­ate mov­ing for­ward af­ter meet­ing with the Min­is­ter of Health but want­ed to re­serve them un­til she met with the heads.