Riau workers face weekend toil

Riau workers face weekend toil

PEKANBARU, Riau: The provincial government has found working five days a week ineffective and is to reintroduce the six-day week from April 1.

The Riau administration had weighed up all the consequences before it decided to refuse the shorter working week, the governor's secretary Rustam S. Abrus said yesterday.

"During this experimentation, we found that employees wasted too much of their time. They generally go home for lunch and return to work very late in the afternoon," he was quoted by Antara as saying.

The government does not forbid employees from having lunch at home because it has no money to provide free meals at offices, he said.

Provincial governments across Indonesia have been experimenting with shorter working weeks since the middle of 1994. The central government has left it up to individual administrations to decide whether to work six or five days a week. (pan)