Weekend debate
While deciding on the weekends, we need to think of certain issues. The first and foremost is why do we need weekends and should that be in line with what the others are doing.
Frankly, if we care about economy, we cannot remain dissociated from the rest of the world in these days of competitiveness and globalisation. There is no doubt that we need time to relax and carry out family chores to become productive in our routine work, be it in the government or otherwise. It took ages to determine that 40 working hours per week are perhaps ideal and anything more, or less makes it counter-productive. In order to stick to the 40-hour schedule, in the none too distant past, it was proposed in the USA that they might work 10 hours daily and enjoy a 3-day weekend. So, even the two-day weekend can also be altered if the country so desires. However, for some reasons that did not materialise. What I want to emphasize by this is that we, in our country, should adapt to a regimen that best suits our needs and at the same time takes care of our bad attributes.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. What is so wrong in working from 9:amto 5:00pm with offices closing down at 1:00am on Fridays and Saturdays and having a holiday on Sunday? This gives us a 40-hour working week, people don't leave early on some pretext or the other and stops the early leaving and late coming culture when given a two-day weekend. This should make the business community happy too, who have made very caustic and justifiable remarks while wanting only Sunday as weekend.
Can we not shift away from traditional thinking and make adjustments to suit our needs?