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)