The government approved a decision to change working hours for public sector employees to become 35 hours per week whereas Saturday will no longer be a working day. This means that the schedule will change on Friday from 8AM till 3PM instead of 8AM till 11AM and Muslim employees will get a two-hour break to go pray.
The decision has apparently upset many Muslims in the country because Friday is prayer day and is unofficially considered a day off in most Muslim-dominated areas in Lebanon. For example, I know for a fact that you can’t get anything done in Saida on Fridays and have to wait till Saturdays, but that’s also the case in most areas in Lebanon since everyone, Christian or Muslim, leaves at 11 which doesn’t make sense.
To be honest, we cannot ask the government to set different working hours for every area depending on its religious affiliation as it would be a headache and that’s not how things work, but I am against dropping Saturdays because this is the only day where people who work all week (like myself) can get things done. If we had better alternatives (like e-forms) than heading out and finishing the papers ourselves, then I can totally understand but it’s either you pay LibanPost extra charges or you go on Saturdays by yourself.
What’s gonna happen now is that no one is going to work on Fridays and Saturdays are off LOL!