No More “Monday” Holidays
By Dickson Jere
A Bill will be presented to Parliament to scrap the observance of Monday as a public holiday in case where the actual holiday fall on Sunday.
The “Public Holidays (Amendment) Bill, 2026” is likely to be passed in the current sitting of Parliament before it is dissolved next month.
Under the current law, a Monday if observed as public holiday if Sunday was public holiday. I actually never understood the rationale of this law on Mondays.
“The object of this Bill is to amend the Public Holidays Act so as to remove the observance of a Monday as public holiday on the day following a public holiday falling on a Sunday,” the Bill reads.
I will make a written submission to the Parliamentary Committee on this Bill and argue that even the “Day of National Prayer and Reconciliation” should be combined with the “Declaration of Zambia as Christian Nation” as it was suggested before.
I support this Bill with my suggested additions. We need to work and work and reduce on unnecessary holidays.
In addition, we should be thinking of cutting the number of holidays by 50%. The current 16 holidays in a year is way beyond what our fragile economy can tolerate.
To make matters worse, our productivity and work ethic are disgraceful. The prayer and fasting and reconciliation as well as the declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation holidays must be scrapped. They don’t add to the spiritual wellbeing of the nation and have contributed to cheapening the Christian faith by making it fashionable to be a “christian”.