Kaduna to begin transition to four-day working week from Dec 1

The Kaduna government says it will begin a transition to a four-day working week in the state from December 1.

The state government says public servants, except those in schools and healthcare facilities, will “in the interim” be permitted to work from home for one day per week.

Muyiwa Adekeye, special adviser to the governor on media & communication, announced this in a statement on Monday.

According to the statement, the measure is designed to help boost productivity, improve work-life balance and enable workers to have more time for their families.

“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 Kaduna state government says it “expects the required legal and regulatory framework to be in place by January 2022” so as to give the private sector ample time to “engage with the process”.