(AKI) - Moroccan transport minister Karim Ghellab denied on Thursday media reports that the government has banned prayer time for employees with national air carrier Royal Air Maroc (RAM) owned by the royal family. "Employees for the airline RAM have only been asked not to pray in their offices, though if they want to pray they can go to a mosque, which is not forbidden. That's the only point, there is no ban on prayers," he told Arabic satellite television Al Jazeera.The Arabic service of the BBC reported this week that as of this week RAM employees would not be allowed to take a break from work for the five Muslim daily prayers nor would they be allowed to pray in the workplace. An internal document for RAM workers reportedly warned that "errors of the past whereby prayer time is used to spend hours out of the office must not be repeated."
The decision would have been unprecedented given that the company is owned by the royal family and that King Mohammed VI is the country's religious leader. The minister however denied this claim in the interview to Al Jazeera stressing that employees can go to a mosque near their workplace and pray.