Sri Lanka allows public employees to take an extra day off to grow food.

Sri Lanka has approved a four-day work week for public sector employees to help them cope with a chronic fuel shortage and to encourage them to grow food, the government announced on Tuesday, as the country faces its worst financial crisis in decades.

The island nation, which employs approximately one million people in the public sector, has been hit by a severe foreign exchange shortage, leaving it unable to pay for critical imports of fuel, food, and medicine.

Many of the country’s 22 million people have to queue for hours at gas stations and have been without power for months.

Sri Lanka‘s Cabinet approved a proposal late Monday for public sector workers to be given Friday off for the next three months, partly due to the fuel shortage, but also to encourage them to farm.

“It appears appropriate to grant government officials one working day off… to engage in agricultural activities in their backyards or elsewhere as a solution to the expected food shortage,” the government information office said in a statement.

Last week, the UN warned of a looming humanitarian crisis in the island nation, pledging $47 million to assist more than a million vulnerable people.

Currency depreciation, rising global commodity prices, and a now-reversed policy prohibiting the use of chemical fertilizers pushed food prices up.