General News of Friday, 14 December 2018
Source: adomonline.com
2018-12-14
Ace Anan Ankomah, Private legal practitioner
Legal practitioner, Ace Kojo Annan Ankomah has described as useless the commemoration of Easter Monday and AU Day as public holidays.
He explained that, Easter Monday for instance absolutely no religious significance as there is no biblical record of any special event on the Monday after the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday.
His comment comes after government laid a new bill before Parliament to amend the Public Holidays Act to include January 7 and August 4 as statutory public holidays.
The new bill which was laid by the Interior Minister, Ambrose Dery, on Thursday, December 13is seeking to make January 7 Constitution Day and August 4, Founders Day.
It is however proposing to scrap the AU holiday on May 25 as well as the Republic holiday on July 1 to be observed only as commemorative days if approved.
Commenting on the issue on Adom FM’s morning show Dwaso Nsem Friday, Ace Ankomah said he will be very elated if Parliament approves the bill for AU Day to be scrapped.
“The AU day was most useless; even in Ethiopia where the AU headquarters is, 25 May is not a public holiday. Its only five African countries including Ghana,Gambia, Namibia and others which celebrate it” he opined.
The legal luminary also bemoaned the number of public holidays in a country like Ghana which in his opinion is too much time wasted which affects productivity.
“We now have an average of one holiday every month, plus 104 weekend days, and annual leaves of between 20 and 30 days. This means for one third of every year we are not working – just sleeping or having fun. And even for the remaining working days we work for only 8 hours a day.
We are reducing the amount of working days based on the number of holidays we have”he bemoaned.
Ace Ankomah also stated that, the practice where when a statutory holiday falls on a weekend,the next week day is made a holiday should also stop because it adds no value to the growth of the economy.