Shift mid-week holidays to Fridays — Kofi Akpaloo

The founder and leader of the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), Mr Percival Kofi Akpaloo, has suggested that all holidays that fall in the middle of the week should be shifted to Fridays or Mondays. That, he said, would boost domestic tourism.

"When a holiday falls mid-week, you can't travel because you would be going to work the following day.

“However, when it is on a Friday or Monday, you can travel as a result of the long weekend to have some sight seeing around the country, among other things," Mr Akpaloo said in an interview with the Daily Graphic on Wednesday.

Potential

For him, domestic tourism had the potential of helping to transform the country for the better as it could help in raising revenue for national development.

Moreover, he said domestic tourism could be used to address the unemployment situation in the country as it created jobs and wealth for the country.

“We are all talking about creating jobs in the country and I think promoting domestic tourism would go a long way to help do that. This is to enable most of our young men and women to have something to do,” he said.

Founders day

Mr Akpaloo said Wednesday’s Founders day holiday for instance could have been shifted to the coming Friday so that people could travel, adding that travelling to other parts of the country helped businesses to boom in those areas.

The third Founders Day holiday was marked last Wednesday to recognise the contributions of the country’s forefathers to its independence on March 6, 1957 from British colonial rule.

The day, which is the third to be celebrated, is a statutory Public Holiday and is observed as such throughout the country.

Amendment

A Public Holidays Amendment Bill (2018) was laid in Parliament by the Minister for the Interior, Ambrose Dery, and passed to amend the Public Holiday Act, 2001 in 2018.

The new bill quashed three public holidays and introduced two new ones. The affected holidays were the Republic Day which fell on July 1, African Union (AU) Day which fell on May 25 and the Founder’s Day, September 21, which happens to be Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah's birthday, September 21 is now marked as Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day.

Mr Akpaloo said anything that could help to stimulate domestic tourism should be encouraged by all Ghanaians, especially the leaders, so that their followers would embrace that.