The General Administration Department (GAD) has ordered all heads of departments to regulate attendance of officials in their offices amid spike in covid19 cases.
“With a view to ensure adherence to social distancing norms in government offices across the Union Territory, it is hereby ordered that attendance of employees in these offices shall be regulated,” reads the order issued by the Commissioner Secretary GAD Manoj Kumar Dwivedi.
For this purpose, the GAD has directed that all officers of the level of Under Secretary and above shall attend office on all working days.
Whereas, for regulating the attendance of officers and staff below the level of
Under Secretary, all Heads of Departments shall prepare a roster so as to ensure that 50 percent of staff attends office on every alternate day.
“The staff who are not required to attend office on a particular day and they shall work from home and shall be available on telephone and electronic means of communication at all times,” it says.
However, this direction shall not apply to offices in Civil Secretariat and move offices where staff has already been split by half. The Government offices were also directed to continue to suspend bio-metric attendance till further orders.
Meanwhile, speaking to Greater Kashmir some of the government officers and employees alleged that no steps have been taken to sanitize or spray disinfectants in many offices even as some employees in these offices and their relatives have tested positive from time to time.
“Are we waiting for government offices to become hotspots of covid spread? It is possible because not all the offices are being disinfected with sprays,” the officials said.
However, a senior officer said: “We spray disinfectants and close the offices for two days whenever some official there gets infected by the virus or dies due to it.”
“We have given sanitizers to all the employees and officials,” the officer said, adding that they were taking all precautions.