Ten days departmental leave not sufficient

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I am writing with reference to an an article I saw on the Internet published on January 3, by the Ministry of Finance and The Public Service titled, “Amendment to staff order – leave provisions chapter 7”, which said that an officer is entitled to a ten-day departmental leave and 10 days sick leave per year. I do understand that some of these laws were constituted from way back, passing down through the various governments, but I strongly believe that despite the progress in technology there are still a lot of manual efforts that go into doing one’s job.

Take for instance government workers in the healthcare sector who have multitask because the establishments are short staffed. On the other hand, they have to work for extended hours to ensure those in need of care are well taken care of, the staff are overworked. I believe that 10 days for the 12 months are just not enough to suffice for the amount of work being done by people.

I am a healthcare worker so I know exactly what it is like being slotted just the 10 departmental leave days and the 10 sick days per annum.

The current quota of leave is not even equal to one day per month because there are 12 months in a whole year. I am certain that everyone has personal things to take care of, which can only be done outside of work hours.

That personal work can’t be facilitated during work hours and often when one gets off from work it is late in the day and most business establishments are closed. If one takes a day off, it might not be sufficient because that will be spent on catching up with personal work, and the person would not get rest.

On the other hand, if you decide to take more than one departmental day you have to be calculating to see how many days you have remaining so that you don’t exceed the allocated days.

I strongly believe that this amendment should be revisited by the government granting each officer at least 15 departmental days per year will make a lot of difference.

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS