KUALA LUMPUR, July 11 — The Public Service Department (JPA) has exempted five service schemes in the Ministry of Health (MOH) from a 45-hour work week under the SSPA shift system.
The five service schemes, who now get to continue with a set 42-hour work week instead of an additional three hours, are nurses, community nurses, medical officers in the emergency department, assistant medical officers, and health care assistants, amounting to 82,637 health care workers.
“The government takes note of concerns from health care workers about the implementation of the 45-hour work week under Sistem Saraan Perkhidmatan Awam (SSPA),” JPA said in a statement today.
“After an in-depth study on operational needs and critical duties performed by health care workers in directly saving patients’ lives from bed to bed, regardless of the time, the government sees that such responsibilities require an extraordinary level of physical, mental, and emotional preparedness.”
For months, nurses and medical assistants in the public service have been opposing a 45-hour work week that the government sought to implement across the civil service, without exemption.
The College of Emergency Physicians similarly said in a statement last November that extensive working hours of a minimum of 45 hours a week posed “serious health, safety, and performance risks”, besides increasing the risks of medical errors. Emergency doctors called for a reduction of working hours to a maximum of 40 hours a week.
