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Residents use long weekends to travel around the world while accumulating annual leave to travel back home
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Dubai resident Anzal Lateef embarks on a European tour during the last statutory holiday in 2022. He combined a four-day UAE national holiday with four additional paid holidays to France, the Netherlands, Italy and Austria.
Anzal is one of tens of thousands of expatriates in the UAE, who typically use statutory holidays to travel to different countries while retaining their annual leave to return home. The engineer has been a UAE resident for the past 10 years and has traveled to the UK, US, Czech Republic, Hungary and Turkey thanks to the country’s generous official holidays.
Anzalatev
“I planned ahead to get the cheapest flight tickets. For this trip to Europe, I booked a flight to Vienna in September. I got it for a low price of Dh600 per person,” said the Indian expatriate .
Under the current labor law in the UAE, employees are entitled to 30 calendar days of annual leave for each year of continuous service to their employer. However, counting statutory holidays, UAE residents will get 43 days of paid leave next year.
Statutory holidays in the UAE are announced weeks before the start of the new year, giving residents plenty of time to plan.
In 2023, UAE residents will enjoy 13 days of public holidays. Some breaks become longer as they come before or after the Saturday-Sunday weekend.
Here’s a breakdown of next year’s official holidays:
- Gregorian New Year: January 1 (one day)
- Eid al-Fitr: Ramadan 29 to Shawwal 3 (four days)
- Arafah and Eid al-Adha: Dhul Hijjah 9 to 12 (four days)
- Hijri New Year (Islamic New Year): July 21 (one day)
- Prophet Muhammad’s birthday: September 29 (one day)
- National Day: December 2nd and 3rd (two days).
long weekend
Arafah and Eid weekend are likely to be the longest official holidays next year. Due to lunar observations, residents may be closed from Tuesday, June 27th through Friday, June 30th. Considering the Saturday-Sunday weekend, you have six days off.
The Hijri New Year and Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) birthday holiday falls on next Friday. So each of these occasions translates into a three-day weekend.
Also read:
travel goals
Like Anzal, Sadick Omar, an Egyptian expatriate living in Sharjah, also plans to take time off during these breaks. During the National Day holiday, he went to Belgrade, Serbia.
“I wanted to relax because I was so busy at the office last month. I took my family to Belgrade for three days. The weather was perfect for spending quality time with my family,” said the Sharjah resident.
Anzal has set his sights on next year’s longest holiday – Eid al-Adha – before traveling to Europe. “I own pretty much every major travel app, and I browse through them to find the cheapest airfare.”
Input from SM Ayaz Zakir
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