Letters to the Editor
View(s):Towards a ‘new normal’ for office workers and schoolchildren
While listening to the Budget Speech, I was delighted to hear that one of the suggestions in my letter to the President and the PM in May 2020, to assign office workers to offices closest to their residences in the respective district has been reckoned for implementation. This while permitting them to engage in extra income earning activities arising as a bonus accruing from savings on time, energy and money spent in travelling across districts on a daily basis.
This was the first among several long term measures I suggested to mitigate the risk of ‘community transmission’ of the deadly coronavirus when using public and private transport.
Here are some other suggestions that may be useful:
Office workers
1) Introduce flexi-hours for both public and private sector workers. This, while reducing rush hour traffic, ‘over-loading’ and traffic congestion will also help in better time management.
2) Make arrangements for employees to ‘work from home’ by embracing technology and giving targets/ assignments. This will improve productivity of staff and reduce over-loading and traffic congestion.
3) Make train/bus season tickets available online or at designated supermarkets/shops as in other countries so that the workload and the health risk of the conductor/ticket collector can be drastically reduced. In many countries the issue of tickets is handled by the driver.
4) Factories/public/private sector institutions can be induced with concessions to provide van/bus transport to their employees wherever possible.
When the above steps are implemented, the transport sector, with their existing movable assets and rolling stock, would be in a position to deliver a satisfactory service to the commuters in a more rational and cost effective manner.
Schoolchildren
1) The elusive policy requirement to send children to schools in their locality has to be implemented forthwith. This measure will surely reduce traffic congestion on the main roads. The present practice of sending children in the Western Province to Colombo schools has to be stopped as it has become a major facilitator of traffic congestion on Colombo roads. Then the school bus/van service can be confined to the locality and the need for parents to drop their children at school before leaving to office will also become redundant. Parents/children will face lesser travelling risks and save travelling time and money which can be spent on studies, homework and extra-curricular and income earning activities.
2) Schools also should adjust their opening times in keeping with the flexi-office hours of the public/private sector in their areas.
If we can implement these measures as practically as possible, after convincing the respective trade unions of the dire long-term need for a ‘paradigm shift’ in our lifestyles towards a ‘new normal’, it will surely improve our security, productivity and discipline leading to a prosperous Sri Lanka.
Bernard Fernando
Moratuwa