It was announced officially today! Following the direction of H.H. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the ministry cabinet decided to change the weekend starting September from Thursday & Friday to Friday & Saturday in all ministries, institutions, government departments, government and private schools.
What do you think about this decision? Do you like the new weekend days?
WAM Article (Arabic)
WAM Article (Google Translated)
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21 comments:
That's interesting... And fun. I always prefered a Saturday off, rather than a Thursday off.
Google translator is quite bad. Somehow it translated Hayat (life) into Rwanda. I don't get why it did that for me. But I wanted to test it out, to see if a couple of bloggers would be able to see a well-to-do version of my blogs in English rather than the other languages. Not good.
for real?! oh..
A no-brainer to make the change, but a little more lead time would make sense. School schedules are set, many are about to leave for the summer and then this change gets tossed in.
A lot of glossy calendars, etc. just became obsolete.
Mrs Redstar has Thursday and Friday off, I have Friday and Saturday.
This means that whilst we do only have one day together, we also get a free day apart to do our own things - can be both good and bad!
The best thing about this change, if it happens, is that kids will get to spend more time with their working parents.
The worst thing is that Thursday's lightweight traffic situation will be no more!
Hooray - I have been arguing for this for ages.
for years it was fri/saturday. and then mo'ness in the 90's had the brainfart to make the weekend thurs/friday. does this mean someone finally told him one of his so-called brillant ideas wasn't so brillant?????
WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD UAE!
check www.dangerdxb.blogspot.com for our take on this change, a change by the way that we support 100%
who is mo'ness?
I think the reference in the anonymous post is objectionable and should be removed ASAP. It's a play on the name and title of the most important person in this land. Hope SD acts soon.
I'm at an absolute loss to know what it refers to, to be honest. Firstly the most "important" person in this land currently is President Khalifa, and throughout the nineties it was Sheikh Zayed.
Secondly I haven't ever heard this before, that the weekend was changed at this time, so it would be interesting to hear from any OBEs (old boring expats - sorry!) if this is really the case.
1) the Big Boys can stand up for themselves. they have the cid, uae military intelligence, nsa, cia and etisalat monitors to protect their butts. i have an anonymous log in screen.
2) the weekend was changed in the 90's to take advantage of the uae 'working' during the rest of the world's weekend. however what happened to most business that had both uae and intl clients is that they wound up working 6days (all except for friday). it was never implemented across the board and was more of a 'best practice (according to who, i ask) suggestion'. the govt, it's dependencies and new companies are the only ones who ever adopted the work week. whereas many private institutions, especially those that were in business long before this stupid idea bubbled up, kept their old holiday schedule.
3) if i'm not mistaken this all happened in the mid 90's. and in the mid 90's the only moving and sheiking going on was in dxb. and since the good inhabitants of za'beel still had some clout in abu dhabi they got their weekend change.
While they are at it, they should totally become a "developed country" and have saturday and sunday off...will please lots of people who think we are backwards...
SD: I think the new post from anonymous make its clear that he hits at the man or leader whose name start with (mo) and his honor title ends with (ness). He even gives the palace name. Critisise is ok, but no need to be ofensive nad insulting.
el condo:
thanks for correcting me. i was not aware that the thurs/fri weekend was gulfwide. my friends in bahrain and kuwait gave me the impression this was a uae (dubai specifically) thing.
when folks complained and whinged and crabbed about the weekend days the story i always heard was that the weekend was timed to exploit the 'off' days of the rest of the world. in a 'gee we keep working while you're sitting on your bootie'-mentality.
and to those of y'all missing the sarcasm gene...relax.
Change could be a good thing...
Unless the UAE is careful, the chaos that Qatar experienced a couple of years ago will migrate a little bit east.
We'll have one half of a typical married couple working in the public sector and getting Saturday off, while Spouse who works for a private company gets Thursday off.
Meanwhile, anyone who has clients in both sectors will end up with a one-day weekend.
BBC NEWS Middle East Emirates changes days of weekend: "The move is expected to be widely welcomed, although it will put the UAE out of step with Gulf neighbours.
It is not known why the Emirates adopted a Thursday-Friday weekend a decade ago, but BBC Gulf correspondent Julia Wheeler says speculation centred on pressure from its powerful Saudi neighbour to standardise Gulf countries' weekends.
However, since then, any company dealing with Europe has only three half- days of mutual office hours.
Many firms in the UAE are owned by the ruling families of the seven Emirates, and our correspondent says it is clear that if they want compete on a global scale - beyond the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council borders - they must be more accessible during the week."
i just wanna clarify if its only for government sectors? what about the privates sectors? arent they included in this 2 days weekends? (firday & saturday)
great!!! another working day at live admins!
actually it was a very bad move.. b4 was much better for us.. "uae ppl" when it was like that.. now its just annoying ,, and ver uncomfortable for us,, unlike b4
"It's not a conspiracy that UAE, a Muslim country had Thursday and Friday off. Friday is the Sabbath for Muslims, and preparation for the Sabbath begins Thursday afternoon."
Friday is not the Muslim equivalent of Sabbath. It's not an obligatory rest day, rather it is a day on which there is obligatory Salah in mosque. Hence it is enough for a Muslim to pray a congregational prayer, they can work on Friday if they wish.
The reason Friday is a weekend in Muslim countries is because it is more convenient and reasonable than other days. Also they are no "preparations" for Fridays.
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