{"id":65270,"date":"2024-03-19T17:44:25","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T17:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work"},"modified":"2024-03-19T18:28:31","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T18:28:31","slug":"simataa-four-day-week-wont-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work","title":{"rendered":"Simataa: Four-day week won\u2019t work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Namibia. <\/strong><\/span>With the current general poor attitude displayed by some civil servants, introducing a four-day work week in Namibia would be catastrophic, Cabinet secretary George Simataa has said.<\/p>\n

Simataa, a public servant for over 40 years, said this during a sit-down with New Era last week where a barrage of contemporary issues about public service, his professional and personal life were unpacked.<\/p>\n

His comments come at a time when some local institutions are set to embark on testing the four-day work week waters, in trials that will determine its viability.<\/p>\n

The pilot programme is locally spearheaded by Pulse HR Network Namibia. It is expected to be implemented by selected businesses. It is scheduled for six months starting next month.<\/p>\n

From where Simataa stands, introducing a four-day work week will bring the economy to its knees.<\/p>\n

Simataa is aware that Kenya is among the few African nations exploring the four-day work week phenomenon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a very difficult situation. If you have a bad culture like we have in Namibia.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m the head of the public service in terms of the law and in terms of image. I know the culture that exists within the public service. People come to work as they wish. It has not been easy to control people,\u201d Simataa said.<\/p>\n

According to the secretary, there is a general sense of entitlement among civil servants.<\/p>\n

The entitlement, he said, is not performance-based, but rather on whether a public holiday is on the horizon.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople now demand. When it\u2019s Christmas? they ask, can we have a half day and knock off at 10h00? That should not be the issue. The employer should say, \u2018this year you worked very hard. Therefore, you deserve to have a half day to go for your Christmas\u2019, but not to demand it,\u201d stated Simataa.<\/p>\n

The same attitude, he said, reared its head during the burial week of the late president Hage Geingob. Some civil servants, he recalled, were demanding that Friday, 23 February, be made a public holiday. \u201cThat attitude of entitlement, of not wanting to work, If you have the presence of that culture or attitude in your workers, I don\u2019t think the issue of four days and three days will be attainable. So, I would say at this stage in Namibia, it is not an easy thing to advocate for,\u201d he maintained.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cOtherwise, the economy will die because we have not come to that stage. Look at what happened when we had Covid-19, we had said to people that you are free to work from home, [but] even cleaners, they said, \u2018I\u2019m working from home\u2019. How do you work from home when you are a cleaner?\u201d<\/p>\n

The government also faced challenges during the Covid-19 period, as some employees simply went on holiday when they were expected to work remotely.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd even those that were working from home, there have been many cases that came to my table, where the supervisor is almost fighting the subordinate about \u2018where is the proof to show that you did some work\u2019? There\u2019s no way that this person did [the work] except for a few phone calls, which is, in my view, an expenditure because you are spending government money to make useless phone calls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not ready in Namibia because of the attitude we displayed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Diametrically opposed to this view was seasoned unionist and former teacher, Trade Union Congress of Namibia (Tucna)\u2019s Mahongora Kavihuha, who said work patterns have been changing since time immemorial.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not a strange phenomenon. People used to work for 20 hours in a day until trade unions intervened and it was changed to eight hours. It meant, a worker can now spend eight hours at work, eight hours with his family and eight hours of sleep,\u201d Kavihuha said.<\/p>\n

For him, it is high time for Namibia to consider the four-day work week in the context of employee time sovereignty, suggesting that some employees in fact work for 24 hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cCovid-19 has taught us that we don\u2019t need to be in offices to be productive. In fact, you can perform wherever you are while sharing the time with other responsibilities of your existence. Of course, offices create good employee relations, but do not translate into productivity,\u201d Kavihuha continued.<\/p>\n

He added that societal challenges such as abuse of substance, collapse of families and insufficient maternity leave periods are exacerbated by prolonged working hours or days.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to go back to the basics and develop a system where a worker can spend more time with the family,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He, however, hastened to warn employers.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, in principle, we support it. But we are also very cautious that some employers will try to come up with funny things to say, \u2018you\u2019re working for four days, so your salary will be reduced\u2019. We are not going to do that. The basic employment conditions cannot be touched, which includes the salaries. The most important thing to look at is productivity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment-Creation says it is open to innovative approaches to enhance work-life balance and productivity within the workforce. Cognizant that they do not operate in isolation, the ministry indicated that it cannot endorse nor dismiss the four-day work week pilot programme without the views of other stakeholders.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Namibian Employers Federation (NEF) claims it has not been formally consulted on the matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe notion of a four-day work week in Namibia seems a bit far-fetched,\u201d responded Helene Ochs, acting secretary general of the NEF.<\/p>\n

Salary collectors<\/p>\n

With over 100 000 employees and a staggering N$35.4 billion wage bill, the government is the single largest employer in Namibia.<\/p>\n

However, in the public domain, some have referred to the wage bill \u2013 which the government has struggled curtailing \u2013 as wasteful expenditure.<\/p>\n

Asked if the spending was justified, Simataa said \u201cyes\u201d, and went to explain why he thinks civil servants and the services they render daily help keep the country afloat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public service and the public servants are very important people. I\u2019ve heard that thing of saying public servants are useless. I disagree. When we had Covid-19, where was the private sector? These public servants are really the people who made sure people don\u2019t die from Covid-19. It\u2019s a well-known fact and internationally, that\u2019s the point that we have seen in which we build quick hospitals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went into partnership with the private sector, we secured medicine, we had meetings to plan for Covid-19 to avoid our people from dying, not anyone else. I\u2019m just giving as an example, the droughts come in this country every year. Who takes care of the public or the citizens of this country? It is the public servants. I\u2019m pointing out the importance of the public servants.\u201d<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Namibia<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Namibia. With the current general poor attitude displayed by some civil servants, introducing a four-day work week in Namibia would be catastrophic, Cabinet secretary George Simataa has said. Simataa, a public servant for over 40 years, said this during a sit-down with New Era last week where a barrage of contemporary issues about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":65269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12],"tags":[234,236,233],"class_list":["post-65270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-policy","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-namibia","tag-namibia"],"yoast_head":"\nSimataa: Four-day week won\u2019t work - Namibia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With the current general poor attitude displayed by some civil servants, introducing a four-day work week in Namibia wou ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Simataa: Four-day week won\u2019t work\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With the current general poor attitude displayed by some civil servants, introducing a four-day work week in Namibia wou ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Namibia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-03-19T17:44:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-03-19T18:28:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nambia\/sites\/29\/2024\/03\/sm_1710860242.039915.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"469\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Simataa: Four-day week won\u2019t work\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-03-19T17:44:25+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-03-19T18:28:31+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work\"},\"wordCount\":1156,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nambia\/sites\/29\/2024\/03\/sm_1710860242.039915.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"africa press\",\"Africa Press-Namibia\",\"namibia\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"policy\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/simataa-four-day-week-wont-work\",\"name\":\"Simataa: Four-day week won\u2019t work - 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