Iraq is “crowded” with all kinds of holidays: Businesses are halted and employees “are not compensated” for official working hours, 4 JULY

Iraq is “crowded” with all kinds of holidays: Businesses are halted and employees “are not compensated” for official working hours

Hardly a week goes by in Iraq without one of its days being a holiday, paralyzing Iraqis and making some of them “happy” and others “grumpy,” especially with the cessation of work in official departments.

 According to the reading of specialists and researchers, Iraq is the country that witnesses the most disruption in official working hours. If the federal government does not declare a holiday, it authorizes the governorates and districts to make the day they want an official holiday.

 The official holidays in Iraq for the year 2024 are as follows:

January 1, New Year's Day

January 6, Iraqi Army Day

April 10th for three days, Eid al-Fitr

May 1, Labor Day

June 16-20, Eid al-Adha

June 26, Eid al-Ghadir

According to expectations, the Islamic New Year will fall on July 7.

July 14, Revolution 14 (public holiday)

According to expectations, July 16 will be the tenth of Muharram (an official holiday), and the birth of the Prophet Muhammad will be on September 15.

October 3, Iraqi National Day

December 10, Iraqi Victory Day.

All of these holidays are official, and are specified by an official law voted on by Parliament on May 22, 2024, for Iraqis to enjoy, excluding the weekend, which is designated as (Friday and Saturday).

Earlier, economic expert Nabil Al-Marsoumi said:

*Year = 48 weeks

*Total official holidays per year (Friday and Saturday) = 96 days

*Total official occasions in the year = 22 days

*Total number of official holidays per year = 118 days.

According to Al-Marshoumi, these holidays “are added to religious occasions and emergency holidays such as rain and high temperatures announced by the central government and local governments, which are estimated at about 22 days a year, the highest in the world, while there are 8 official holidays in England and Wales, which is considered one of the fewest number of holidays in the world.”

 He continued: “The total number of official and unofficial holidays is 140 days, and the total number of annual working days is 225 days,” noting that “the total number of employees’ salaries, including self-financing and contracts, is 70 trillion dinars.”

Al-Marsoumi pointed out that “the average daily salary is 192 billion dinars, which represents the daily loss from the disruption of work, while the total financial losses from unofficial holidays, except for Friday and Saturday, may amount to 4.224 trillion dinars, and the total financial losses from official and unofficial holidays, except for Friday and Saturday, amount to 8.448 trillion dinars.”

Most Iraqi cities and districts contain shrines for the masters and infallibles, and if the anniversary of one of their martyrdoms falls, the governorate declares an official holiday that includes all its departments, or it is designated in a specific district or district, as happened with the Babylon Governorate Council.

The council said in a statement today, Wednesday, that it had “voted to suspend official work in Al-Hamza Al-Gharbi only for tomorrow, Thursday, on the occasion of the martyrdom of the grandson of Al-Abbas, peace be upon him.”

Unlike Al-Marsoumi, economic expert Dhurgham Muhammad Ali does not see any losses incurred by Iraq due to official holidays, while he pointed out the existence of “benefits.”

Ali said in an interview with “Eshan”: “Official holidays in Iraq do not constitute major losses for government departments because most government departments are service-oriented, not productive.”

He explained that “the increase in official holidays leads to a reduction in electricity consumption, traffic congestion and fuel. On the other hand, there are no major economic losses resulting from the holiday because the departments are only service departments, and most of the departments that are in contact with citizens’ lives, such as health, emergency services and others, continue their work.”

He pointed out that "the economic losses come only from the fact that the number of working hours for employees is less for the same salaries, and this is not considered a direct loss." link