Afghanistan Loya Jirga was held from 20 – 24 of November 2013 in Kabul city in order to discuss about bilateral security agreement between Afghanistan and US.

 I did not know about the holidays first and therefore I went with my family to general market of Kabul called “Mandawe” in order to buy monthly food expenditure. When we reached to the market, there was no market and shop opened and we did not meet even 30 men walked; however would be very difficult to walk in Mandawe markets and its streets when there is no off days because of huge number of the people.

We walked there for almost 20 minutes and came back to home without buying anything with full pocket, (means we did not spend the allocated money for food expenditure).

I thought with myself about the negative economical impact of 2 days off in Kabul particularly in Mandawe of Kabul where thousands of Afghan merchandisers, shopkeepers, buyer and sellers come together and sell/purchase products.

There is a poor lady who works as cleaner in my house and gets daily wage salary. She told me that her two sons are milk seller and due to 2 days off now they are not able to go out and work and therefore they don’t have anything to eat now. Because in these two days they were not able to go out for work and earn money.

The government of Afghanistan should think about the economic conditions of poor workers and then take decisions about such holidays which are unpredictable for the people. Of course such off days are good opportunity for governmental employees to rest in their homes because their salary are paid during such off days but it will suffer daily wage workers particularly those who are responsible to feed other family members.