United Arab Emirates Cabinet approves public holidays for 2019 and 2020

The private and public sectors will observe the same number of days

In an unexpected move, the UAE Cabinet has approved the public holidays for the rest of 2019 and 2020.

There are two notable issues from the announcement. Firstly, the private sector has been granted the same number of holidays as the public sector. Previously, when a holiday lasted for several days or when it was broken by a weekend, then the private sector usually observed less public holidays. Under the new arrangement, both sectors will enjoy 14 days of public holidays.

Secondly, two holidays have disappeared from the government list – Isra Miraj and the Prophet’s Birthday. It seems unlikely that both would have been omitted by accident, so we will reflect this by changing the status to show they are no longer public holidays.