{"id":32323,"date":"2017-02-03T21:32:35","date_gmt":"2017-02-03T21:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/gambia-s-president-barrow-scraps-jammeh-s-four\/"},"modified":"2017-02-03T21:32:30","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T21:32:30","slug":"gambia-s-president-barrow-scraps-jammeh-s-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/gambia-s-president-barrow-scraps-jammeh-s-four\/","title":{"rendered":"Gambia&#8217;s President Barrow scraps Jammeh&#8217;s four-day week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{The Gambia&#8217;s new president has scrapped the four-day week introduced by his predecessor Yahya Jammeh.}<\/p>\n<p>In a statement Adama Barrow said that public sector employees would now have to work a half-day on Fridays too.<\/p>\n<p>Four years ago, Mr Jammeh had said the country&#8217;s mainly Muslim population should use Fridays to pray, socialise and tend to fields.<\/p>\n<p>However, under the new rules, the working week is actually officially shorter by three-and-a-half hours.<\/p>\n<p>Official working hours are now 08:00 to 16:00 from Monday to Thursday and 08:00 to 12:30 on Friday &#8211; making 36-and-a-half hours a week.<\/p>\n<p>Previously public sector employees were meant to work 40 hours a week, from 08:00 to 18:00, Monday to Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>BBC Africa&#8217;s Umaru Fofana says the four-day week had its critics, but under the former government, publicly expressing criticism of official policy could lead to severe punishment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now we have rejoined the civilised world,&#8221; Allieu Ceesay, a trader in Serekunda, The Gambia&#8217;s largest town, told our correspondent by phone.<\/p>\n<p>The new directive comes less than two weeks since Mr Jammeh went into exile in Equatorial Guinea &#8211; and within a week of President Barrow&#8217;s return from Senegal to assume power.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Jammeh had initially accepted defeat in elections in December, but then tried to have the results annulled.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Barrow went to Senegal for his safety as the regional bloc Ecowas intervened to end the crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Regional troops were deployed to The Gambia when Mr Jammeh&#8217;s term of office officially ended last month and his exit was negotiated by West African leaders.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-18015 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_93945620_afp_.jpg\" alt=\"President Adama Barrow issued the directive within a week of arriving home to take power\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{The Gambia&#8217;s new president has scrapped the four-day week introduced by his predecessor Yahya Jammeh.} In a statement Adama Barrow said that public sector employees would now have to work a half-day on Fridays too. Four years ago, Mr Jammeh had said the country&#8217;s mainly Muslim population should use Fridays to pray, socialise and tend [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-32323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32323"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=32323"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=32323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}