Speaker of Parliament Hon.Rebecca Kadaga has ordered staff to vacate all their offices and stay home until the situation normalises due to corona virus pandemic.
Ms.Kadaga has also directed for continuity of Parliamentary business without any interruption until further notice.Hon.Kadaga also directed that few professional and most essential staff will remain working to make sure that the institution remains running but in shifts to avoid contraction of the Covid-19.
“The respective heads of department shall on rotational basis, determine staff that will be required to report on duty. Nonetheless, staff of the Budget Office; The Leader of the Opposition and Department of Official report will work full time to facilitate Parliament work,” she said.
The staff from the 23 departments have been scaled down from 500 to 250 persons who shall access the precincts of Parliament during the period of handling the pandemic.
Kadaga however added that, ‘staff that are away from office are not on leave and may be called upon at any time, and should therefore keep their telephones and email contacts open’.
The measures taken by the Parliamentary Commission follow the Presidential directives on controlling the spread of the coronavirus.
In a related development, the sittings of Parliament have been moved from the traditional Chamber to the conference hall which allows for more space between the Members of Parliament.
The MPs who had to speak from two podiums set up at the front of the hall saw them apply sanitizers before and after they made their contributions.
Speaker Kadaga added that the cleaning firm would be instructed on how to effectively clean the lifts and door handles within the institution so as to limit the potential spread of coronavirus.
