Absenteeism, Late Arrival Rampant in Govt Offices (Saudi Arabia)

Arab News ^ | 23 December 2003 | P.K. Abdul Ghafour

[nickcarraway]

JEDDAH, 23 December 2003 — Sixty-nine percent of civil servants in the Kingdom stay away from work without a good reason while 54 percent come to work late, according to a recent study by the Institute of Public Administration.

Among the study’s more striking revelations was that the heads of departments rarely check if their staff keep their working hours, Al-Madinah Arabic daily reported yesterday.

Of those who came to work late, 39.4 percent were 15 minutes late, 24.1 percent 30 minutes, 17.8 percent just under an hour and 18.7 percent for more than an hour, the study said.

Employees with master’s and doctoral degrees arrived at work as much as three hours late, said the study based on interviews with 2,365 civil servants.

The study, which covered 181 government departments in different regions, revealed 42 percent of those with secondary school certificates or below went to work late.

Forty-seven percent of participants said their superiors never checked them while 18.4 percent said supervisors made only one or two rounds a month.

Among the government employees, schoolteachers were the most committed to their working hours, the study said, adding that health officials were particularly prone to leaving early.

Officials in the Hail region topped the list of absentees, the study said, while those in the Riyadh region were most often late. Civil servants in the Northern Region were most likely not to turn up at all.

Respondents agreed that tough measures were needed to discipline negligent officials. They said the Supervision and Investigation Authority was not doing enough to prevent civil servants from neglecting their duties.

The study showed that 69.1 percent missed one day of work a month, 21.8 percent two days, and 9.1 percent three days or more.

[Publius]

Gee. They're more like us than we thought.

[Sunshine Sister]

You picked my brain!

[Tijeras_Slim]

What would they actually do if they showed up on time?

[aynrandfreak]

I agree that workers here are lazy, but we are considered to be workaholics by most other country's standards. I think they're more like the EU than us.

[sully777]

Unless I did not to catch it, the article failed to mention if the workers were Saudi nationals or American. By all indications, the article refers to Saudi work ethic.

A teacher friend tells me that oil families in Mideast are Arab version of Beverly Hillbillies (note Saddam's gaudy palaces). The culture does not expect the children of the rich to work or face harsh realities of their conduct. My friend said servants receive punishments due to the rich brats. And finally, wealthy familes usually help little Ahmed and Mohommed pass course work and get into university with the family's political influences rather than stellar intellect.

SOP Saudi work ethic. Little wonder the servants of these civil servants are transported from India and Phillipines.

[kabar]

No surprise here. As is the case in most of the developing world, the government is overstaffed and inefficient. It is used to employ friends and relatives of the powerful. Also, various benefits accrue to bureaucrats. In Indonesia, they used to receive an extra ration of rice.

[skepsel]

Until I saw Saudi Arabia in parentheses I thought the headline was about my coworkers in the USPS!