Summer midday work bans have officially started in Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, and will go into effect this week in Saudi Arabia and UAE. With the exception of Qatar, the bans are based on arbitrary calendar dates rather than on real daytime temperatures, leaving workers exposed to dangerous levels of heat stress.
As peak summertime approaches, several Gulf countries have registered record-breaking - Opens in new tab high temperatures. In the UAE, where the summer work ban has not kicked in yet, the highest temperature - Opens in new tab this year registered at 51.8 °C. Bahrain, which has the shortest summer work ban in the Gulf, running only from July to August, recorded its hottest May - Opens in new tab in more than a century. Temperatures have soared so high that Civil Defence authorities - Opens in new tab have stepped up awareness campaigns to ensure residents take safety measures to protect against fire hazards and heat. Nevertheless, migrant workers continue to labour outdoors in the peak of the afternoon heat.
Qatar - Opens in new tab has recently revised its midday work ban regulations, now the longest in the GCC: Under the new regulations, outside work cannot be conducted between 10:00 and 15:30 from 1 June to 15 September. Previously, workers were prohibited from working outdoors from 11:30 to 15:00, between 15 June and 31 August.
The legislation also adopted the Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature - Opens in new tab (WBGT) index to assess the level of occupational heat stress, making Qatar the first in the Gulf to do so. According to the new regulations, workers are prohibited from working in workplaces where the WBGT index rises above 32.1 °C – a WBGT threshold that still remains dangerously high. Some observers say that the revised law is weak and will offer only marginal protection (see sidebar).
According to a study on safety thresholds for athletes - Opens in new tab, when the WBGT index is between 30 and 32.2°C, the “maximum practice time is 1 h. For Football: no protective equipment may be worn during practice, and there may be no conditioning activities. For All Sports: There must be 20 min of rest breaks distributed throughout the hour of practice.”
