The official working week in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is now being reduced to 4.5 days. And with weekends being Saturday and Sunday, the national working week will be mandatory in all government units from January 1 and Fridays will be a full-day holiday for Muslims to pray, depending on regional norms.
The UAE has now become the only Gulf country where the weekend will not be on Friday and Saturday. At the same time, it has also joined the list of non-Arab world. Under the new schedule, the weekend in the public sector will now start on Friday afternoon and end on Sunday. The Friday prayers in mosques will be held at 1.15 minutes throughout the year.
The UAE has taken this step to keep pace with the global market. In this way his working week will be shortest in the world. The UAE has thus become the first country in the world to initiate the process of shortening the national working week from the five-day working week. Prior to this, until 2006, the weekend was Thursday-Friday in the UAE, then it was Friday-Saturday according to the private sector.
The aim of the UAE government to extend the weekend is to strike a balance between work- and social life. So that there can be a qualitative increase in the economic competitiveness of the UAE.