15,000 sick leaves reported in three days

Manama: More than 15,000 sick leaves had been submitted by Kuwait’s state employees in the first three days of Ramadan.

“Most of the leaves were issued by health centres and were related to exhaustion and headaches,” civil service sources told local Arabic daily Al Jareeda.

Most of the employees who submitted sick leaves were women, but absenteeism levels are also high among young and old employees.

“The official monitoring of the employees’ attendance also revealed around 100,000 cases of late arrival to work and around 15,000 cases of early leave from offices,” the sources said.

Adult Muslims must abstain from food, drink, smoking and sensual pleasures from sunrise until sunset throughout the month as a test of patience and compassion with the needy.

However, several people use the occasion to stay up late in family or social gatherings and subsequently find it difficult to report to work on time.

“There are employees who seek the highest degrees of comfort and abstain from work or cannot perform normally. They tend to look for ways to reduce their presence in offices,” the sources said. “This explains why so many people submit sick leaves or complain from headaches during Ramadan.”

Health centres are allowed to hand in sick leaves of up to three days.

“This is a recurring issue of employees abusing the system. The number of sick leaves increases in the last ten days of the month as employees seek to link the days off with the Eid holidays to travel,” the sources said.

Kuwait’s municipality head has reportedly ordered the launch of a probe into the high level of absenteeism after he discovered during surprise visits to two centres that more than 200 employees had failed to show up at work.