01/03/2023
17710 times read
01/03/2023
17710 times read
KUWAIT CITY, March 1: The national holidays, which lasted for four days, were preceded by a high rate of absenteeism at workplaces under various justifications such as sicknesses and vacations. The employees’ attendance on Tuesday was “humble” with an absenteeism rate reaching about 20 percent. On the other hand, school students were more serious, as they recorded much higher attendance, especially at the secondary level, reports Al-Rai daily. On the Tuesday after the end of the holidays, work resumed in various government agencies but the employee attendance rate in the offices of those agencies was weak.
According to administrative sources from more than one government agency, the attendance rate on the first working day after the end of the holidays ranged between 80 and 83 percent, while the remaining percentage were on official holidays, with the exception of some emergency absences. The sources said they expect the shift rates to get normal at the beginning of next week.
They revealed that, “The Civil Service Commission is strict in calculating periods of absence from working hours as part of employee evaluation work, because it is linked to rewards for excellent work.” Meanwhile, informed sources in the Civil Service Commission (CSC) indicated that some government agencies entered the dates of attendance and departure of their employees in CSC systems from the period preceding CSC’s circulation of manually reactivating the fingerprint system in the integrated CSC systems.
Evaluation
They said, “Those responsible in the ministries, agencies, and institutions affiliated with CSC for matters related to evaluation have the authority to enter evaluations related to the dates of attendance and departure of employees during the period of relying on paper statements to register their working hours, provided that the rest of the days of the year are calculated according to the fingerprint system from the date it was activated.”
The sources affirmed CSC’s commitment to applying the provisions of the decision on the rules and procedures for Kuwaitization of government jobs, indicating that, “The services of a large number of non-Kuwaiti employees were terminated, and the percentage of non-Kuwaiti employees out of the total workforce in CSC achieved the percentages specified for each job group in the decision, before the end of the five-year period as specified by the decision.” In schools, the noise returned to the classrooms on Tuesdays, with the resumption of studies.
A noticeable absence was not witnessed after the national holidays, even though many students did not attend schools a day or two before the national holidays. Students are now heading to the serious period in the second semester, as they are preparing for the upcoming examinations to be held in a few weeks time. The Ministry of Education often deals with the phenomenon of mass absence of students before and after official holidays using many procedures, the most important of which is deduction from grades. An educational source revealed about “a limited and uneven absence of some students after the last vacation, and the list will be applied to absentees by activating the item absence and grades, and counting their absence without a medical excuse.”