Fewer home helps ‘but local needs are being met’
THERE has been a dramatic fall in the number of home helps available in Shanghai now compared with before the Chinese New Year holiday, but local needs are being met, the government said yesterday.
There were about 500,000 home helps working in Shanghai before the holiday, with 270,000 leaving for home for the break. By Thursday only 5 percent of them had returned to the city, Liu Min, vice director of Shanghai’s commerce commission, told a press conference.
Meanwhile, due to the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, demand for home cleaning from Shanghai families has dropped significantly, and 40 percent of home services for the elderly were either suspended or delayed, Liu said.
“The commission has been working with other government departments and the trade association on measures to ensure the supply of services, giving priority to those serving elderly residents,” she said, adding that those services are the most indispensable.
Priority is being given to services for elderly residents who live alone and who are seriously ill or disabled.
To ensure safety, Liu said home help agencies are advised to assign staff who remained in Shanghai during the holiday to serve the elderly, so as to reduce the risk of spreading the virus.
All home helps are required to wear a mask when working and to wash their hands frequently. They are also required to take their own temperatures before going to work every day and report to their agencies, Liu said.
Agencies are required to closely follow the health of their home helps and advise those from key epidemic areas to delay their return to Shanghai, while strictly implementing the isolation requirements of the government.
Those who traveled to Shanghai from Hubei, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Henan, Hunan, Anhui, Sichuan and Jiangxi provinces and from Chongqing are required to stay home in quarantine for 14 days, and those returning from other provinces and cities in China are asked to stay in isolation at home for seven days.
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