Unlike in the rest of the world, employees in a tiny nation on Africa's west coast can now enjoy an extended weekend of three days, beginning Friday.
The reform introduced in the public-sector by Gambian President Yahya Jammeh came into force on February 1 ignoring Opposition protest.
From now on, employees need to work only on four days, Monday to Thursday, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. It means they will get an additional off day, but will have to work two hours extra on working days. The Gambian government employees have been working five days a week, from 8 in the morning to 4 in the evening. The change in schedule does not reduce the total number of 40 working hours a week.
The new holiday is mainly aimed to benefit the majority Muslim community, for whom Friday is a day of prayer.
Announcing the changes last week, the Gambian leader who is keen to be seen as a devout Muslim said Friday, Saturday and Sunday would give the people more time for "prayers, social activities and agriculture - going back to the land and grow what we eat and eat what we grow, for a healthy and wealthy nation."
State-run schools would have the option to open on Saturdays to compensate for closing on Fridays.
Friday is already a non-working day in most of the Muslim world, which opens offices on Sunday, a traditional weekend holiday in other parts of the world.
Although the President's office said it took the decision after consulting with the Cabinet and considering public demands, the leader of the Gambia's Opposition National Reconciliation Party, Hamat Bah, said the reform would drastically cut productivity, and would seriously affect the growth of the country's economy, which according to him is "very small and weak."
Another Opposition leader, Omar Amadou Jallow of Gambia's Peoples' Progressive Party (PPP), called the ten-hour working day as an insane and ludicrous decision by the autocratic leader.
The rights record of Jammeh, who seized power in a July 1994 bloodless coup as a young Army officer, has long been under question.
A 2010 UNICEF report highlighted human rights abuses, AIDS among children and media censorship in Gambia, the smallest country on the African mainland.
Jammeh, who has been ruling the country of about 1.7 million people since he grabbed power in the 1994 coup, is criticized for human rights violations.
In 2007, Jammeh claimed that he had developed a herbal medicine that cures AIDS.
In August last year, nine convicts facing capital punishment were executed by firing squad. Following international outcry, he was forced to halt the executions of the remaining 38 death row inmates.
The Gambian economy is dominated by farming, fishing, and tourism, but one third of its population lives below the international poverty line.
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