translated from Spanish: Office instructing civil servants to resume face-to-face work in April exempts people who are “susceptible to contagion”

During the day on Friday, President Sebastián Piñera’s instruction was learned from his ministers, so that public officials may resume their face-to-face duties amid the coronavirus pandemic. It was through a trade, that the Minister of Finance, Gonzalo Blumel, gave new instructions to the different services under the so-called Gradual Return Plan. According to the document, one month after workers were ordered to perform functions from their homes or exempted from time control, “it is imperative to terminate the Circular Office N10 of 18 March 2020 (…) and adopt new management measures for the proper delivery of services by the State Administration.” In this regard, the trade contends that the distributions must accept the plan of gradual return to the function, following a number of elements. These include that officials “in risk groups may be exempted from working hours and allowed to perform their work outside the institutional units, remotely”. In particular, it refers to adults over seventy years of age; women and those “who are particularly susceptible to contagion because of their health conditions,” they say. In this way, they should be incorporated gradually “so that during the month of April of this year, the respective public body can operate in a normal face-to-face manner, obviously considering the restrictions that sanitary conditions allow”. In conclusion, they add that “all measures established by the health authority that are necessary to safeguard the health and protection of both public officials and servants and the general public, through the use of masks, the provision of soap/alcohol gel, the minimum distance required, avoiding agglomerations, should be incorporated and implemented.”

Original source in Spanish