Kaduna State Govt To Experiment, Implement Four-Day Working Week

Workers in Kaduna State will start running a Monday-Thursday working week as from December 1, 2021, the state government has announced.

The special adviser to Governor Nasir El-Rufai on media and communication, Muyiwa Adekeye disclosed this in a statement on Monday.

He explained that the policy is based on lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and is targeted at boosting productivity while at the same time giving workers more bonding time with their families.

Adekeye further stated that the new four-day working week will be on a temporary basis as workers would be allowed to work from home on Fridays and will not involve public servants in schools and healthcare facilities for now.

The Governor’s media aide added that the private sector will be given adequate time to adjust and work out modalities for the new policy.

He added that the temporary structure will run until proper adjustments and legal frameworks are put in place for full transition.

“The measure also reflects lessons learnt from managing the Covid-19 pandemic which required significant relaxations of old working traditions and the ascendance of virtual and remote working arrangements,” the statement reads.

“However, all public servants, other than those in schools and healthcare facilities, will work from home on Fridays. This interim working arrangement will subsist until the government is ready to move to the next stage of the transition which will culminate in the four-day week across all MDAs in the state.

“Senior officials are working on detailed guidelines to ensure that the emergency services and the education and health systems in the state continue to deliver services 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the transition and beyond.

“The government will also ramp up its efforts to give public servants access to digital devices and platforms to enable them work effectively from home. Given the significant investments the state government is making in ICT, it will ensure that most of its automated services deliver the levels of performance required to give citizens seamless access.”

The required legal and regulatory frameworks are expected to be in place by January 2022 the statement noted.