Five day work week trials to be reviewed

Five day work week trials to be reviewed

BANDUNG, West Java: The government will review its five
working days experiment in June to decide whether the plan will
be continued or terminated, a cabinet minister has said.

Minister for Administrative Reforms T.B. Silalahi said on
Wednesday that the results of the appraisal would be submitted to
President Soeharto in July.

The shorter working week has been implemented on a trial basis
for the past several months. If the new schedule is acceptable it
will be implemented in August, when the nation celebrates its
50th anniversary.

"The trial-run shows that offices which fail to improve their
performance working the shorter week are those which cannot
innovate," he said in a seminar.

But Silalahi reiterated that the government did not intend to
force the implementation of the shorter week scheme and would be
flexible about its introduction.

Silalahi said the government was planning to offer four
alternatives in July for the future of the plan, which is aimed
mainly at reducing offices' operational costs, allowing civil
servants to spend more time with their families and, ultimately,
improving their welfare.

The alternatives are to make all government offices shorten
their working week from six to five days; to enforce it with some
exceptions; to allow offices more time to decide; and to drop the
scheme.

The plan to have a shorter week with longer daily working
hours received strong opposition from Moslem schools in Java.

Critics say that the scheme, if implemented, will eventually
force Islamic schools to close for good because their students
generally go to the state public schools in the morning. If
regular school hours are extended, it is argued, the children
will no longer have time to attend the religious classes in the
afternoon.

Silalahi said the plan to shorten the working week was made
several years ago, not -- as some people thought -- just days
before it was announced.

With the shorter working week, official working hours increase
from 37.4 hours a week to 40.5 hours a week.

The minister said the increase in weekly working hours was
"normal". By comparison, he said, the six working days in
neighboring Singapore amounted to 50.5 hours.

"The government's plan to increase working hours is not aimed
at making people work for an unacceptably longer period," he
said.

He added, however, that the government did want to see
productivity improve. (pet)