Government mulls 3-day weekends

Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel Roxas II disclosed yesterday that the government is contemplating three-day weekends in relation to the future presidential approval of local holidays.

Roxas said that government is trying to rationalize the approval of local holidays.

Specifically, he said, government wants local holidays to be scheduled either on a Friday or a Monday and not during the middle of the week.

Scheduling local holidays on a Friday or a Monday would, thus, result in three-day weekends.

Such three-day weekends, Roxas explained, would result in less production disruption than if the holiday were taken in the middle of the week.

At the same time, he said, the three-day weekends would promote domestic tourism as people would be encouraged to go out of the city and visit the provinces.

Roxas pointed out that in the US, all local holidays are scheduled either on a Monday or Friday. Most Americans then normally go out of town.

Under the current practice, government is sometimes even forced to grant four-day weekends because the holiday sometimes isolates one working day between a normal weekend such as Sunday and the local holiday which falls on a Tuesday.

If government does not declare the isolated day as a special non-working holiday, most workers just take a leave of absence anyway.

Government has been studying innovative ways to cut down on business cost.

Roxas had earlier floated the idea of restoring daylight savings time in order to lower energy costs.