Carisa Lee

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Allyson West says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s call for the full re­turn of the pub­lic ser­vants to work on Mon­day was mis­in­ter­pret­ed.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence up­dat­ing the coun­try on the lat­est COVID-19 re­stric­tions on Sat­ur­day, Row­ley said, “As of Mon­day, the full pub­lic ser­vice is to get back out to work.”

This led pub­lic ser­vants to be­lieve that the cur­rent work from home ro­ta­tion­al pro­gramme had been aban­doned and they were to re­turn to work.

But ac­cord­ing to West, Row­ley’s state­ments were mis­un­der­stood and the phrase “full pub­lic ser­vice” didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean every­one re­turn­ing to their of­fices.

Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, West said Row­ley re­al­ly meant that pub­lic ser­vants were now re­quired to do 100 per cent of their du­ty even if this was from home.

She point­ed out that af­ter the Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment that the pub­lic ser­vice was to op­er­ate at 50 per cent back in Ju­ly to en­sure so­cial dis­tanc­ing could take place at gov­ern­ment of­fices, some em­ploy­ees took ad­van­tage of the work from home sys­tem utilised, which led to low­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and then trick­led down to the cit­i­zens.

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

She ac­knowl­edged that one of the main fall­outs of the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the PM’s com­ment was that pub­lic ser­vants who were par­ents were left in a quandary about how they would take care of their chil­dren, since day-cares and schools re­main closed as ed­u­ca­tion is be­ing ac­cessed on­line by stu­dents.

At the press con­fer­ence, the Prime Min­is­ter sought to clar­i­fy this by say­ing the Gov­ern­ment, which is this coun­try’s main em­ploy­er, will take in­to ac­count work­ers with chil­dren by giv­ing them the op­tion of go­ing to work at lat­er hours, work­ing from home or ro­ta­tion where ap­plic­a­ble.

But it seems some pub­lic ser­vice man­agers mis­un­der­stood this call as well. Some pub­lic ser­vants who pre­ferred to re­main uniden­ti­fied said they were still re­quired to be at work phys­i­cal­ly by their man­agers. One work­er and sin­gle moth­er said she raised the is­sue with her man­ag­er when she went out to work on Mon­day but did not get any feed­back.

Yes­ter­day, West said these is­sues were be­ing ad­dressed.

“What is hap­pen­ing is that the PS’ are hav­ing dis­cus­sions with each oth­er and then that’s sup­posed to trick­le down to their staff, es­pe­cial­ly the man­agers of their units,” West said.

She said the most the crit­i­cal thing now is prop­er man­age­ment of the work­flow through­out the pub­lic ser­vice.

“It can­not be that you walk in­to a pub­lic ser­vice of­fice and you don’t know whether there will be some­body there to serve you,” she said.

On Fri­day in the Sen­ate, West said a work from home pol­i­cy with­in the pub­lic ser­vice is to be es­tab­lished and said it was in mo­tion even be­fore COVID-19 but not­ed it needs to be prop­er­ly man­aged.

“What COVID did was ac­cel­er­at­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of that pol­i­cy,” she said.

West told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that she did not have the at­ten­dance sta­tis­tics of the pub­lic ser­vice from Mon­day. She said the turnout at her min­istry was good but they were al­so look­ing in­to the at­ten­dance rate at oth­er min­istries.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke said he will re­spond to the mix-up to­day.

Ear­li­er this week, how­ev­er, Duke threat­ened to take le­gal ac­tion against the Gov­ern­ment to stop what he called a wicked act to the work­ing class by ask­ing them to re­turn to work with the cur­rent mea­sures in place for the pan­dem­ic still se­vere­ly af­fect­ing work­ers.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has erred and made an er­ro­neous call,” Duke said on Mon­day, al­so telling his mem­bers to choose their chil­dren over their jobs.