There are other ways of dealing with people you're trying to hire and keep. My information is that oftentimes by the time you have them trained, they're not going to get paid enough for the amount of pressure and work they have to do, and they go on. So in some departments, it continues to be a major problem, but others have found a way to address the pay issue by moving the categories, say, from AS-1 to AS-4.
Has the Department of Public Works considered doing this to help retain some of the employees? It does take a long time to train them, and once you've trained them, you'd like to retain them.