Kampala — The Ministry of Public Service is working on the scheme for civil servants, their spouses and children to access free Anti-Retroviral (ARVs) drugs.

This was said on Tuesday at a one-day HIV/Aids workshop organised by the Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Industry at Hotel Equatoria.

On February 25, 2004 the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Service held a consultative meeting with other Permanent Secretaries and they resolved to devise means of making ARVs accessible by civil servants.

Their resolution was made in the standing instruction N0.1 of 2004, which The Monitor read.

The document says from 1995 to 1999, between 3.1 percent to 3.4 percent of public servants died of HIV/Aids related illness.

This affected performance of the public service following the loss of skilled labour, which imposed on the ministry an extra cost of recruiting and training new labour.

About 10,000 public servants are in need of ARVs, the National Coordinator for HIV/Aids Counselling and Care, Dr Akol Zainab, said during the workshop on Tuesday.