Food Shortage: Sri Lanka Approves 4-Day Work Week To Encourage Gardening

Sri Lanka has approved a four-day work week for public sector workers to grow food in their back yards in a bid to forestall a looming food shortage as the government struggles with its worst financial crisis in decades.

The island nation, which employs about one million people in its public sector, has been hit by a severe foreign exchange shortage, which has left it struggling to pay for critical imports of fuel, food and medicine.

Many of the country’s 22 million people have to queue up at petrol stations for hours and have been enduring long power cuts for months.

Sri Lanka’s cabinet approved a proposal for public sector workers to be given leave every Friday for the next three months, partly because the fuel shortage made commuting difficult and also to encourage them to farm.

“It seems appropriate to grant government officials leave of one working day … to engage in agricultural activities in their backyards or elsewhere as a solution to the food shortage that is expected,” the government information office said in a statement.

The extra day off would be a “solution to the food shortage that is expected to occur in the future”, the statement read, adding that cutting down on civil servant commutes would also help reduce fuel consumption.