No 2 day weekend for Omani banks

[muscati]

CBO has taken their decision: No 5 day week for Omani banks. Interesting, ha? All the banks in the country wanted (except for OIB). CBO itself has a two day weekend. And after over a year of "studying" the matter it turns out that it "would adversely affect certain sectors." The decision was "taken after the CBO sought views of the relevant wings of the government and business." More importantly, "The CBO had studied the suggestion carefully and consulted with all concerned, not the CBO and banks alone."



Now bankers can lay to rest their ridiculous dream of a two day weekend and go back to work.



Today's Times of Oman:



<b>Five-day-work week plan for banks scrapped</b>



By Palazhi Ashok Kumar



MUSCAT — The much-publicised five-day-work week plan for banks, which was under the Central Bank of Oman’s (CBO) serious consideration, has been scrapped finally.



Hamood Sangour Al Zadjali, executive president of the CBO, told Times Business that the apex bank had decided not to effect the change, as there had been serious views that the curtailment of working days would adversely affect certain sectors.



In fact, the CBO considered the proposal for review following suggestions from certain quarters, and was seriously looking into the five-day-work week plan. Sangour said the decision to scrap the plan was taken after the CBO sought views of the relevant wings of the government and business.



In fact, bank employees were expecting the new system to be operational. If the five-day-work week system approved, banks would have observed a Sunday-Thursday work week instead of the existing Saturday-Thursday workweek.



Expert opinions were that since advanced technologies have made the number of face-to-face transactions less, a five-day work week should not invite any room for anxiety or significant hardships to end-users. The CBO had studied the suggestion carefully and consulted with all concerned, not the CBO and banks alone. In fact, there were different views among banks themselves, though most banks saw advantages in the proposal.



Some of the neighbouring countries, including Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan and elsewhere, a five-day-work week system has already been implemented to keep pace with the international financial markets. Banks in Oman have already achieved over 90 per cent Omanisation and over 3,000 Omanis are employed in the local banking sector.



Some attributed the CBO decision to scrap the plan to the large number of bank branches, over 50 per cent, in the interior.



It was said that banks would have saved a lot on power, telephone bills, etc. If daily working hours were extended and days curtailed, customers, both the individual and the corporate would have enjoyed more banking hours. The 24-hour banking service, ATMs and other 21st century banking services have already made banking easy for customers, even in the interior, bankers said.



As far as the local financial market is concerned, the Muscat Securities Market (MSM), stockbrokers, Oman Aviation, Petroleum Development Oman and some other institutions are closed on Saturday and observe a Friday-Saturday weekend. The banking and financial community in Bahrain and Qatar has been observing a Friday-Saturday weekend for a long time.



Normally banks work for 42-hours a week. If the new work week system was implemented, the number of days would have come down to five, but the working hours per day would have increased considerably, with no loss of working hours. Though the official banking hours are from 8am to 12noon (Saturday-Wednesday) and 8am to 11am on Thursday, banks personnel work till 2.30pm. In fact, the real banking hours (debit and credit transactions) are from 8am to 12noon as the CBO clearing house closes at 1pm.



Currently, government offices work from 7.30am to 2.30pm (Saturday-Wednesday) and private offices from 8am to 1pm (Saturday-Thursday) and 4pm to 7pm (Saturday-Wednesday). Some private offices work from 8am to 5pm with a lunch break from 1pm to 2pm.



“World’s leading financial markets remain open from Monday to Friday and remain closed on Saturday and Sunday. As Friday is the official weekly holiday in the Gulf, a Sunday-Thursday workweek and a Friday-Saturday weekend is desirable,” bankers told Times Business. In fact, banks are part of the international banking network, making Thursday a normal working day would be more appropriate

[Smile]

I smelt it that this will not work out very easily with CBO. It seems that we will have only 3 days in a week to deal with other financial institutes abroad.



However, I like the idea of HSBC, staff work on rotation and get 2 day weekend, which seems to be OK.

[KORN]

biat** if you know who I am talking about

[Nomad]

I used to work at Bank Muscat and even then there was talk about this 2 day weekend. I never thought that it would happen... I guess I was right.

Smile, HSBC do get two days off, two weekends in a month. The other two weeks, one day is friday and the other is a random day.

[Liquid_Dreams]

but how would it have worked out any way?? i mean most of us take the opportunity that banks work on Thursday 3ashan n'7alla9 ummorna.

[muscati]

LD, the suggestion from the banks was to close on Friday and Saturday. This way people who work in sectors that have a day off on Thursday can go finish their bank business on Thursday, and people who works in banks can go finish their govt business on Saturday. It would have been convenient for everyone.

[Buzz]

That's absurd man. Why CBO can have a two day weekend and other banks can't <img src="/threads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> Or maybe is it OIB is the one who influenced this decision?

I think all bankers in Oman should file a complain to CBO and ask them to reconsider their final decision on this issue.

[Nomad]

I think that if all commercial banks are to work 6 days a week, then the Central Bank of Oman who is the governing body of these banks should work for 6 days as well.

Muscati, why don't you guys propose that. I'm sure you'll get a lot of support from the banking community!

[muscati]

The Central Bank's position is that banks can choose to close an extra day if they want to but the law wouldn't be changed to shorten the work week. If a bank decided to open 7 days a week they wouldn't be stopped either. It's up to each individual bank's management to decide what's best for their customers, but the CBO won't take that decision on their behalf.

I guess now that the CBO has made its decision regarding the 5 day work week, banks will now have to decide on their own if they want to close an extra day or if they want to resort to a system like HSBC which keeps the bank open 6 days a week but changes staff shifts so that they get 2 days off a week.

I heard NBO has started giving the senior staff one or two long weekends a month.

[Liquid_Dreams]

ishme3na Senior staff ya3ni??

and by this you mean the management right??

[muscati]

I don't know if what I heard was true in the first place about NBO. But if it is then I assume it meant officers and above. Maybe they're doing like what HSBC is doing. Executives get the extra day off as a long weekend, ya3ni either Thursday or Saturday, while junior staff don't get all their extra days as weekends, sometimes they have to take days in the middle oft he week.

[Liquid_Dreams]

oh, ya3ni at the end all will be given two days off? is that what you meant? do management work that hard to deserve a 2 days weekend rather than their staff?? and if they do, can the junior staff get that day paid as overtime?

[muscati]

LD, I think in HSBC all staff get two days off a week, but like I said the junior staff don't necessarily get their extra day as a Saturday or Thursday. Ya3ni maybe they get one Thursday, one Saturday and the other two times might be a Monday and a Tuesday. The reason that the higher ups get all their extra days as Saturdays and Thursdays is because seniority has some privileges, that's all. But no one works more than others and hence no overtime payment is required. Besides banks don't pay overtime either way.

HSBC has this system in place but they prefer to have a system where they close the bank for two days a week and all the staff get the same days off. They were one of the banks that initiated the talk with the CBO requesting a change in banking regulations chaning the business week to Sunday to Thursday. The Central Bank sent a circular to all the banks in Oman asking them for their opinion on this and all banks said they liked it, except for OIB which was against it. CBO then took about a year looking into the matter before finally replying this month that they won't allow it.

Can you imagine how difficult it would be for BankMuscat with 1500 staff or NBO with 900 to implement a system like HSBC's? Who can keep track of who's day off is when for so many people?

[Invincible]

<blockquote><font class="small"><hr />
Can you imagine how difficult it would be for BankMuscat with 1500 staff or NBO with 900 to implement a system like HSBC's? Who can keep track of who's day off is when for so many people?

<hr /></blockquote><font class="post">

Every department can be responsible for the attendance of their employees. I guess the head of the department or supervisors who overlook 10-15 employees can sort out the days off for every employee. Each department can sort it out their own way. Anyhow, if it's not going to be effective, then the only thing that can be done is to put an attendance card system into use.

[muscati]

1) I hear that HSBC has cancelled the two day weekend shift system in their branches. Apparently it caused too many problems. Now on branch staff will get only Friday off, but I think head office departments will continue to get two days off a week on a shift basis.



2) Qatar has announced the shifting of its official weekend from Thursday/Friday to Friday/Saturday. Some analysts are predicting that other GCC countries will soon follow.

[South_Pacific]

The discussion of changing the week-end holiday has been going for quite somtimes maybe three years back,and the main reason/s are to aling Oman and Gulf states to the outside world' week-end holidays, and especially Western world,so banking,businesses,and finantional actitvities can be carrie-out smoothly.They said, the set up of many Muslim's countries week-end holiday,make them to have the differrence of more than four days.



If the main reason of these changing is because of business,between outside world and these Gulf states, and Gulf being a customers, because these countries import allmost everthing from abroad, then, in my views make them an important customers.The famous saying which says the customer is always right, should be appilied here. If those countries can not change their week end-days off, we also should not. If Gulf countries generates a billion of money in their economy,i think we should be in position to dectate and not been dectated.





Never mind who should change their holidays.The present advance of COMMUNICATION technology make easier for people to conduct all types of businesss, when he/she in the office.The world has made progress in field of Tech, that simply,one can say it's unbelevieble.



If we change from Thursday-Friday holiday to Friday-Saturday holiday, will that be the end of it?.Think.