Times Of Swaziland: CIVIL SERVANTS TO WORK ON ROTATIONAL BASIS

CIVIL SERVANTS TO WORK ON ROTATIONAL BASIS
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Stanley Khumalo on 26/03/2020 09:09:00


MBABANE - While civil servants were categorised as an essential service, there
has been a twist on how they are expected to work.
The twist is that the number of civil servants to be at work each week will be
reduced by half, with some working from home, while others will be working at
their duty stations. This was announced by the Minister of Public Service
Christian Ntshangase, yesterday. This, he said, would be effective from Monday
March 30, 2020.  It is also in line with government’s effort to prevent the
spread of the coronavirus. This, according to Ntshangase, will be done on a
rotational basis each week. He said that principal secretaries (PS) and heads of
department were to decide on how that was to be implemented.
Emergency
However, essential services within the civil service which include, among
others; fire and emergency services, health services, meteorology services and
security services will not be affected by the rotational basis schedule as they
are expected to be fully at work to provide assistance during this period of the
pandemic. “The Ministry of Public Service will issue a circular with full
details on this issue,” stated the minister. This directive follows the advice
of the Labour Advisory Board (LAB) to the Minister of Labour and Social
Security, Makhosi Vilakati.
Measures
The LAB had a meeting on Monday and Tuesday at the Directorate of Industrial and
Vocational Training Centre (DIVT), in Mbabane. The agenda of the meeting was
putting in place employment contingency measures in response to the COVID-19
outbreak. The LAB recommendations, which have the acting Labour Commissioner,
Mthunzi Shabangu, Employer Vice Chairperson Bheki Maziya and Alternate
Worker’s Vice Chairperson Patrick Mamba as signatories to the report,
recommended that some government offices or departments should have a scale down
of operations. The scale down was recommended that it should be in the form of
shift work, homework or short-time.