Employees of the Seongdong Ward office eat lunch at tables equipped with glass walls at the office’s cafeteria in Seoul on March 23, 2020, as the nation ramped up social distancing rules to slow the new coronavirus outbreak. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Nov. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — As time-fixed lunch breaks for civil servants are set to be implemented in some areas, pros and cons debates are heating up here South Korea.
Ten district offices in the southern port city of Busan plan to introduce the fixed lunch break for civil servants starting from January next year.
At present, the code of conduct for civil servants guarantees a one-hour lunch break from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Nonetheless, most civil servants working at public services centers usually rotate their lunch time from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. or from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., so services at such centers can continue even during the original lunch time.
The district offices that are set to introduce the fixed lunch break plan to guide citizens to use civil document issuance machines.
However, there are concerns that it would cause inconvenience and confusion for citizens.
In addition, for some civil services such as the issuance of passports that cannot be processed through the these machines or over the internet, citizens may have to wait until lunch time is over.
However, there are some who claim that unconditional opposition is not right given that a fixed lunch break is a legitimate right guaranteed to civil servants by law.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
