Shura Council to Debate Plan Cutting Hours, Raising Leave for Over-50 Civil Servants

A plan to give government staff aged 50 and above shorter days and longer annual leave will be debated by the Shura Council on Sunday, after its Legislative and Legal Affairs Committee recommended refusing the draft changes in principle.

The draft law, based on a proposal from Parliament, would amend the Civil Service Law issued under Decree-Law No. 48 of 2010. It would cut daily working hours in steps linked to age and add extra annual leave.

Under the proposal, employees who have reached 50 would work one hour less a day and receive 35 working days of annual leave a year. For those aged 55, the working day would be cut by two hours and annual leave would rise to 40 working days. For those aged 60, the daily cut would be three hours, with annual leave rising to 45 working days.

The committee said the changes do not sit with the way Bahrain’s civil service rules are built, and raised concerns about equal treatment between employees, the day-to-day running of public services, and the cost to the state.

In its report, the committee pointed to constitutional language that treats public employment as a national service, with duties linked to timekeeping, accuracy and trust. It also cited the Civil Service Law’s approach of setting the main rules in the law, while leaving attendance times, leaving times and leave detail to the executive rules and the decisions and instructions that follow them.

A key objection is that the draft law would split employees by age even where they hold the same grade and do the same job. The committee said the civil service system is built around grade and the nature of the work, and argued that rights and duties should not shift simply because two employees are of different ages while their legal standing in the job is the same.

The report also warned of a gap with the private sector. It noted that both the Civil Service Law and the Private Sector Labour Law use the same basic rule for annual leave, amounting to 30 days a year, and said the proposed rise for older public-sector staff would create an extra benefit not mirrored for private-sector workers. On working hours, it said both laws allow hours to be set with the needs of work in mind, while the draft law would lock age-based cuts into the text of the law itself.

The committee also argued the proposal clashes with Bahrain’s own yardsticks for older age. It cited the Elderly Rights Law No. 58 of 2009 and the Social Security Law No. 18 of 2006, both of which treat 60 as the age used to define an older person who merits special care. The report added that 60 is also a common benchmark used in global work.

Cost and service delivery featured heavily. The committee said reducing daily hours by up to three and adding up to 15 extra leave days a year for a large group of staff would leave ministries and state bodies with fewer working hours to meet demand, unless they found ways to cover the lost time. It said this could add to running costs and place extra pressure on the state budget, while also risking slower decisions and a backlog of work, especially where senior staff are needed during core hours.

The committee cited the view of the Civil Service Bureau, whose representatives told the committee the draft law could not be applied without harming work needs and causing disruption. The bureau said it already issues rules on working days and times, including flexible start times within set limits, and it issued Decision No. 1 of 2023 to bring in unified rules for attendance and leaving times across government bodies, with the aim of improving output and making working life easier to manage.

Figures given to the committee put the number of staff in the target age range at about 6,575, around 16 per cent of the total workforce. The report said 57 per cent of that group work in education and training, 26 per cent in services, and 17 per cent in health. It added that many education staff already take leave linked to the school year, which would limit how far the draft changes could apply across government in practice.

The committee also criticised the lack of prior studies. It said there was no clear work on what the changes would mean for staffing and service delivery, no cost-and-return work, and no social assessment of how the split in hours and leave might play out inside workplaces. It warned the age threshold could also be read by some staff as a step towards early wind-down, rather than an incentive to stay in work longer.

Looking at other systems, the committee said civil service rules in GCC states and nearby Arab countries do not generally use age to set attendance and leaving times, relying instead on grade and the nature of the job. On leave, it noted that some countries grant more than 30 days but often require staff to use it within the year, while Bahrain already allows leave to be carried forward up to 75 working days and paid out on retirement, with total carry-over rising further once the final year is counted.

The committee said it backed its recommendation by unanimous vote, urging the Shura Council to refuse the draft law in principle when it comes up for debate on Sunday.