Wife of Singapore’s Prime Minister, Ho Ching, is appealing to employers who are making their employees who test positive get a Medical Certificate (MC) to prove that they are unwell for work due to contracting the virus.
She calls employers to have trust in their employees and not make them go and see a doctor just for their own ‘bureaucratic and administrative’ requirements.
She also asks them not to ask employees to go and see a doctor just because they are positive as a visit to the doctor is another chance for the virus to transmit.
She also lays out three things which employers or HR personnel and supervisors can do instead.
Here is what she said
“Calling all employers, HR managers and staff, work supervisors:
Do not ask our staff to go get an MC after testing ART+, just so that we have a proper documentary record for our own bureaucratic and administrative requirements.
These are extraordinary times, and sending an ART+ staff to a GP clinic to get an MC is just causing one more point of infection transmission.
Employers, HR personnel and work supervisors have 3 options:
First is to work on an honor system, and trust our employees to do their DIY ART at home, mark their test cartridge with name, date and time, and send a photo of their results. This can serve as an HR record in lieu of an MC.
Second is to have our own supervised DIY test – set up a booth for a supervisor, to witness the staff doing the test and observe the results for ourselves including taking a photo – or we could do this over zoom, WhatsApp or whatever suitable remote video method.
Third is to send the employee to a quick test centre to to a supervised self test.
Do NOT ask the employees to go to GPs, polyclinics or the hospital A&Es for additional tests – this brings more infectious nodes into places with many other potentially highly vulnerable people seeking serious medical attention.
That is unconscionable and irresponsible to put a known ART+ employee into a setting where there are lots of patients, who are sick, frail, and more vulnerable than the general population bcos their immune system is likely to be down when they are sick, old or frail and needing medical attention.“
Image source: Ho Ching/Facebook, Google Maps