5 School Days Per Week from Next Year

While the Trilateral Committee failed to reach an agreement on the 5 day working system, the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development set up a plan to carry out the `5 school-day system` once a month from next January.

The Ministry said yesterday, ``even though the new system has to be introduced in accordance with the implementation of the system in the public and private realms, the Ministry is positively considering to introduce the new system once a month to reduce the confusion and to prepare for the supplementary measures.``

The Ministry will allow the schools to introduce the 5-school-day system every other week.

The Ministry will introduce the new system from March, when new school year begins, without considering the final decision of the Trilateral Committee, rather following the implementation of the new system by the government officials of the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs.

However, the Ministry will provide special education programs by the lecturers from outside to the students who wanted to take the lectures, considering the child care problems of the dual-income families.

Meanwhile, the Trilateral Committee held a general meeting to discuss the introduction of the 5 working day system but failed to reach an agreement.

Therefore, the government will independently go for the legislation of the new system based on the draft by the public experts, while maintaining its effort for a trilateral agreement.

Both the Labor and Management sides strongly opposed against the plans by the public experts. The draft includes such plans, to maintain current regulation about the extra work hours and the accumulated payment for the extra hours, and to introduce the new system from the public and financial industry over 1000 employees in July next year and expand the implementation gradually until 2007. According to the public experts` suggestion, the total annual leave of the first year will be 18 days and will increase 1 day in 3 years up to 22 days maximum.

Ha Joon-Woo hawoo@donga.com