First Arrival Day holiday Wednesday
Stabroek News
May 1, 2004
Wednesday, May 5th has been designated Arrival Day and will be a public holiday, the Ministry of Home Affairs declared yesterday.
The notice was given in a letter from the Permanent Secretary's Office, one day after the National Assembly approved the report of the Special Select Committee on the Review of Public Holidays. That report recommended that May 5 be observed as Arrival Day and May 26 mark Independence Day. These holidays, if falling on a Sunday, would be observed on a Monday.
Stabroek News understands that a similar notice would be issued in about two weeks confirming that May 26 would be the Independence Day holiday.
For many years May 5 has been celebrated as the day marking the first arrival of Indian indentured labourers in 1838. The motion's passage in Parliament clears the way for the Public Holidays Act to be amended to include the two new days. Since there was not enough time to do this before Wednesday the minister made an order effecting the recommendations of the committee's report.