Abu Dhabi // More than 30,000 government workers in Kuwait skipped work on Wednesday and Thursday to extend their Eid holiday into the weekend.
Ten per cent of Kuwait’s 363,000 government employees decided to either claim illness or just not show up to their posts over the past two days to extend the three-day Eid Al Fitr holiday into a nine-day vacation.
Absenteeism at the ministries complex was 40 per cent, the Kuwaiti daily Al Qabas reported.
This was not the first time Kuwait witnessed a post-holiday drop in attendance by government employees. In 2015, 30,000 Kuwaitis skipped the remaining two weekdays that the Eid Al Adha holiday did not cover.
The problem is so widespread that one government worker told The National he was surprised to find many of his colleagues present when he walked into his office at one of the ministries this week.
Hind Al Sabeeh, Kuwait’s minister of social affairs and labour, said that in some government sectors only half of the employees showed up this week.
Kuwait media quoted her as saying the most common way to skip work was getting by getting sick notes from doctors.
Those who failed to show up to work would be called to account, she said.
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Libya's Gold
UN Panel of Experts found regime secretly sold a fifth of the country's gold reserves.
The panel’s 2017 report followed a trail to West Africa where large sums of cash and gold were hidden by Abdullah Al Senussi, Qaddafi’s former intelligence chief, in 2011.
Cases filled with cash that was said to amount to $560m in 100 dollar notes, that was kept by a group of Libyans in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
A second stash was said to have been held in Accra, Ghana, inside boxes at the local offices of an international human rights organisation based in France.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Notable salonnières of the Middle East through history
Al Khasan (Okaz, Saudi Arabia)
Tamadir bint Amr Al Harith, known simply as Al Khasan, was a poet from Najd famed for elegies, earning great renown for the eulogy of her brothers Mu’awiyah and Sakhr, both killed in tribal wars. Although not a salonnière, this prestigious 7th century poet fostered a culture of literary criticism and could be found standing in the souq of Okaz and reciting her poetry, publicly pronouncing her views and inviting others to join in the debate on scholarship. She later converted to Islam.
Maryana Marrash (Aleppo)
A poet and writer, Marrash helped revive the tradition of the salon and was an active part of the Nadha movement, or Arab Renaissance. Born to an established family in Aleppo in Ottoman Syria in 1848, Marrash was educated at missionary schools in Aleppo and Beirut at a time when many women did not receive an education. After touring Europe, she began to host salons where writers played chess and cards, competed in the art of poetry, and discussed literature and politics. An accomplished singer and canon player, music and dancing were a part of these evenings.
Princess Nazil Fadil (Cairo)
Princess Nazil Fadil gathered religious, literary and political elite together at her Cairo palace, although she stopped short of inviting women. The princess, a niece of Khedive Ismail, believed that Egypt’s situation could only be solved through education and she donated her own property to help fund the first modern Egyptian University in Cairo.
Mayy Ziyadah (Cairo)
Ziyadah was the first to entertain both men and women at her Cairo salon, founded in 1913. The writer, poet, public speaker and critic, her writing explored language, religious identity, language, nationalism and hierarchy. Born in Nazareth, Palestine, to a Lebanese father and Palestinian mother, her salon was open to different social classes and earned comparisons with souq of where Al Khansa herself once recited.
