AS much as I enjoy making fun of the many idiotic notions coming out of parliament, I've got to hand it to them this time. Their recent proposal to change Bahrain's official weekend to Friday and Saturday is just what the country needs. Since it was only a proposal rather than an official piece of legislation, it is now up to the Cabinet to approve (or disapprove) before it becomes official. It directly affects government offices, but the private sector, for obvious reasons, will be forced to follow suit. Hopefully the changes will come into effect as soon as possible, because it makes little sense for Bahrain to be so out of sync with the rest of the world.

Currently organisations with five-day working weeks only have Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays in common with their counterparts in most other countries. This makes it difficult to trade, co-ordinate activities or make international calls. Under the new proposal, there will be four days in common, an increase of 30 per cent, which is very significant. It will also allow people to spend more time together if they have the same days off. There will be voices of disapproval (there always are) from people afraid of change, who will argue that it is selling out to change our ways to conform to others', but this is just stubborn nonsense.

Thursdays have no significance at all culturally, religiously or socially. Moving the weekend by a day is just correcting a mistake that was made decades ago. Those who attend weekly Friday prayers can go on doing so and those who don't can continue sleeping in. Everyone's happy. Well... almost everyone. I know two women working in the banking sector who will probably want to kill me for promoting this cause (sorry, girls but I'll take my chances !). They prefer the status quo because having Saturday off allows them to do their shopping, hair, nails and so on, when there is little rush.

They also enjoy driving to work on Thursday when the roads are relatively clear and it takes them a fraction of the time it usually does to get to work. But I know many more bank employees who hate working on Thursday because it robs them of a late night on Wednesday. Sure, they can stay out on Friday, but that's usually when the town is at its deadest, except for a few hotspots. While we're at it, why don't we finally join the civilised world and make five-day working weeks mandatory by law! Working six days is just slavery.

In many companies very little actually gets done on the sixth day of the working week, especially if it's only a half-day. Employees tend to come in late and leave early. Morale is down because they know most of their friends are either relaxing at home or out having fun. There's hardly anything to do anyway since many business associates are off. Human nature makes them delay even the little work they do have until Saturday, because they reason to themselves that there's only a few hours to go anyway. A five-day week will result in a minimal loss in productivity with more time for people to go out, have fun and spend money. This will contribute to the economy and improving people's standard of living.

How often do you hit two birds with one stone?

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