The Ministry of Labor should shield delivery workers from exposure to COVID-19 by banning food deliveries to hospitals, New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) told a news conference in Taipei yesterday, calling the practice “a pandemic loophole.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has failed to specify what “an appropriate, prearranged location” means in its guidelines dated April last year, Chiu said.
As a result, hospitals are largely writing their own rules about delivery locations, which has increased risks to delivery workers and of community spread, he said.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
A video that Chiu played for reporters showed that Hinschu MacKay Memorial Hospital, National Taiwan University Hospital’s Hsinchu Branch and the Hsinchu Armed Forces Hospital have apparently issued different instructions for food deliveries.
The video showed what appeared to be a guard allowing a delivery worker to enter Hsinchu Armed Forces Hospital after asking the worker to remove their motorcycle helmet, citing instructions from the hospital’s president, but a contravention of OSHA guidelines.
“It is not my sense that delivery workers are afraid of doing their jobs. What they are afraid of is becoming that gap” in pandemic prevention, NPP Hsinchu City Councilor Liao Tzu-chi (廖子齊) said.
The central government should bar deliveries at hospitals and other medical facilities, and hospitals that cannot accommodate this should assign personnel to receive meal deliveries, which quarantine hotels have done, Liao said.
OSHA official Yeh Pei-chieh (葉沛杰) said that the guidelines are to give delivery workers and clients flexibility to appoint a location that best suits the hospital.
The agency recommends using aerated, outdoor locations when possible, Yeh said.
“This agency closely follows the recommendations of the Central Epidemic Command Center, and adjustments would be made if and when they become necessary,” he said.
The convenor of the Hsinchu Union for Online Platforms-
Employed Delivery Workers, surnamed Wen (文), said that while on the job, an average delivery worker is in contact with about 50 people per day.
“The thought that we could become a gap in pandemic prevention is disconcerting,” Wen said. “This concern has been repeatedly brought up to the platforms, and their reply is always that they are following the government’s guidelines.”
“However, the guidelines are a mess,” she said.
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