Ministry of Lands and Housing remains closed for walk-in clients |19 January 2021

Ms Denis (Photo: Louis Toussaint)

At present the offices of the Ministry of Lands and Housing located at Independence House remain closed while some staff are working from home and some in the office but with certain limitations.

The director General for Human Resources and Administration at the ministry, Amanda Denis, said that the ministry had to work on a strategy for this restriction of movement implemented by the public health authorities.

“Due to the ongoing pandemic, the management team decided to minimise the number of staff working in the office. Our ministry has three departments: Land, Housing and Infrastructure and we have 178 staff in total. With the new Covid-19 guidelines, we have decided to have only 50 staff at one time in the different offices and a percentage of our staff are working from home. So many of the regular tasks have slowed down. But we are urging the public to use our Facebook page and our email customerservice@mlh.gov.sc to contact us and their queries will be attended to,” noted Ms Denis.

Much of the work conducted by the Ministry of Lands and Housing are quite technical and due to the sensitivity of the responsibilities of the ministry, staff are not authorised to take case files home.

“Therefore this has an impact when the public are requesting for an update or information regarding their respective case. A small number of staff are working physically from the office per a rotation schedule all the while respecting the various health measures in place so as to protect themselves,” explained Ms Denis.

The health and safety committee within the ministry is making sure that as they resume work on January 28, all staff are fully equipped to go out there. For the time being also, all departments have been asked to review their procedures and go through their manuals with the aim of improving service delivery.

“People also need to understand that we are in a restriction period and we are working under some limitations. If they are looking for an update info regarding their application or queries, it might take some time as we work in collaboration with other ministries and if they are also in restriction mode, it will not be easy for us to provide the client with the information on time. Once we resume full service, the clients will have full access to all the services,” concluded Ms Denis.

Vidya Gappy