A spokesman for the Civil Service Bureau (CSB) said today (July 17) that the Government strives to safeguard the health and safety of its staff under the epidemic. The CSB has today reminded bureaux and departments again that they should handle the work arrangements for their staff with flexibility while maintaining the provision of public services.

     Upon the issue of the guidelines to bureaux and departments earlier on, the CSB has been liaising with them closely with regard to the implementation of the measures. Today, the CSB supplemented the guidelines with measures already adopted by individual departments for the reference of bureaux and departments as they implement arrangements for infection control and social distancing. For example: 
 
(a) Departments may consider staggering work and lunch hours to the widest extent possible so that more staff members can avoid the morning and evening peak hours and have lunch outside the usual lunch hour.
 
(b) For those units in a department providing essential public services and functions, the department may consider splitting the staff members into two teams which may then take turns to work from home, such that in the unfortunate event of a confirmed case of a member of one of the teams, it will not bring the entire operation to a halt.
 
(c) Departments may consider allowing their staff members who have taken the COVID-19 test to work from home while waiting for the test results.
 
(d) Departments may, with regard to the situation on the ground, consider making special arrangement to allow their pregnant staff members to work from home during this period.

     The government has all along been striving to safeguard the health and safety of its staff while providing services to members of the public. In fact, during the implementation of the special work arrangement early this year, most of the disciplined services staff and other frontline staff continued to work as usual to maintain public services and the normal operation of their departments as well as fighting the epidemic, so that the public would not be seriously affected.

Ends/Friday, July 17, 2020
Issued at HKT 22:10

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