The United Arab Emirates has made plans to move its weekend to Saturday and Sunday for state employees and had broken ranks with the rest of the Gulf as it accelerated a push to draw in international business and investment.
Like other Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE has a Sunday-to-Thursday working week. The government said the changes will allow the UAE to align more closely with global markets and will come into effect on January 1 and apply to the public sector and schools. All private schools in Dubai will move to the new weekend, the KHDA schools authority in Dubai said in a tweet on Tuesday, December 7, adding it is ‘working closely with our community to ensure a smooth transition.’
There will be a four 1/2-day working week with Friday — a holy day in Islam — being a half-day, the federal government said in a statement. The government, however, didn’t say whether the private sector would adopt the new four 1/2-day week, with the door being left open for private companies to decide how to allocate resources.
