As an employer and a rate payer I was horrified to read the article in the Evening Press about City of York Council's staff sickness absence problem (Council looks to slash costly sick leave, August 18).

In the case of the adult services department this adds up to 28,000 days lost in one year or the equivalent of more than 100 people being paid but doing no work. Either the council has a chronic health and safety problem - in which case it should be investigated by the Health and Safety Executive - or it has a totally ineffectual management.

Instead of comparing the council's appalling absence statistics they should be looking at the real world where absence rates of more than three per cent are considered high. On this basis anything more than seven days a year would become a matter of deep concern and employees who exceeded this figure would be monitored closely to ensure their absences were genuine.

This requires a consistent and firm management approach - not an uncaring attitude to genuine illness, but one which is determined and is seen by staff to be aimed at weeding out malingerers.

Instead of letting the employee talk to an occupational nurse, who then informs their manager that they will not be in work, managers should be interviewing those with high absence records and sacking those who do not want to work. The council could do much worse than to take a leaf from Tesco's book and tell their employees that there is no sick pay for the first three days of absence.

Why should the people of York pay for ten per cent more staff than are needed? Or is this the real reason we have had evening car parking charges imposed on us?

David Johnson,

Main Street,

Upper Poppleton,

York.

Updated: 11:22 Friday, August 20, 2004