KUWAIT CITY, 28 May 2007 — Kuwait yesterday decided to switch its weekend to Friday-Saturday from Thursday-Friday, starting Sept. 1, State Minister Faisal Al-Hajji told the official KUNA news agency.
Kuwait will follow the example of Gulf partners the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar which made the same switch last year in a measure designed to bring them closer to the working week in the West.
The Kuwaiti decision, which applies to government offices, was taken during the weekly meeting of the Cabinet in the Gulf emirate on the recommendation of the Civil Service Commission.
Only oil Saudi Arabia and Oman still apply the Thursday-Friday Muslim weekend in the six-nation alliance of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
The private sector in Kuwait is not bound to follow the government, but banks and most of the oil sector already apply a Friday-Saturday weekend.
In a separate development, former Kuwaiti Oil and Finance Minister Sheikh Ali Al-Khalifa Al-Sabah has been interrogated over a multimillion-dollar graft case, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Al-Watan said Sheikh Ali, who was a minister in the 1980s and early 1990s, was questioned Saturday for the second time by a special three-judge tribunal over his suspected role in the embezzlement.
The next session is to take place today, said the daily, which is owned by Sheikh Ali.
