Holidays and non-working days

When the ‘moon is full’, you have a holiday? Wow…!”

Foreigners often are surprised when informed that every full-moon day is a holiday in Sri Lanka. The term “poya day” is not an internationally known day, except for the Sri Lankans or particularly the Sri Lankan Buddhists; therefore, “full-moon day” may be the simple way of designating this extra holiday every month that Sri Lankans have inherited. Discussions as such often get extended further, because naturally there are other questions and comments to follow.

“How many full-moon days per year?” is regularly asked as many people are not aware of it. “So, in Sri Lanka, there should be at least 12 extra holidays of the year!”

“What do people do on those full-moon holidays? Go out and booze?”

I guess you can’t say “no” to that question, because, although boozing is unacceptable on full-moon day, usually the previous day brings brisk business for liquor sales.

When the world is asleep…

Full-moon poya day as a holiday has a history. Many Sri Lankans, perhaps, are not aware that immediately after coming to power in 1965, the Sri Lankan government led by the Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake, made an astonishing decision to make Saturdays and Sundays working days; instead, “pre-poya days” and “poya days” were made the weekend holidays. At that time, Sri Lanka had a five- and half-day working week. Accordingly, people worked eight hours per day from Monday to Friday and five more hours on Saturday; literally, the weekend was one and half days long.

As each quarter “moon day” in the Lunar calendar was a “poya day” for Buddhists, there are four poya days a month, which may be similar to Sundays. As there was no proper day for Saturday, the government invented the previous day as “pre-poya day”. This move of the government against the international practice of the Saturday-Sunday weekend system, seems to have had far-reaching consequences, although there may have been little discussion and debate over the change.

As Sri Lanka was often making international media headlines in the 1950s and the 1960s, this one was also reported in New York Times on December 12, 1965 under the title “Ceylon Votes Bill for Nation to Use Lunar Calendar.” As the New York Times reported, businessmen have warned of possible chaos of the weekend holiday adjustment, while timetables everywhere – transport, schooling, postal services, telecommunications, newspaper publications and many more – have to be rescheduled.

Compromise for
full-moon day

It’s not difficult to imagine the confusion that this change may have caused in all sort of domestic and international affairs. The confusion was multiplied because, according to the Lunar calendar, some weeks were longer than others. As the New York Times had also noticed, some weeks had eight days so that people had to work six and half days!

Another reason for the confusion was that unlike the usual weekends with Saturdays and Sundays, people were not aware of the pre-poya and poya days, except those important poya days such as Vesak and Poson days. Furthermore, confusion was attached to the difficulty of planning anything for the future beyond the current year, as the new “poya weekends” were not commonly known to the public.

The most critical issue as a developing country was the isolation of Sri Lanka’s economic affairs from the rest of the world, because Sri Lanka’s working week was not compatible with the international working week. Sri Lankans were working when the rest of the world is on weekend holidays and vice versa so that the country’s international affairs as well as economic and financial relations were effectively cut off from the rest of the world.

It was during the subsequent regime led by the Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike that Sri Lanka returned to the internationally practiced solar calendar, bringing the Saturday-Sunday weekend back. But it was done with a compromise, leaving the “full-moon” day of each month as extra holidays in Sri Lanka.

“Prosperous Nation…”

With this change, undoubtedly Sri Lanka has become a top-ranked country with the most number of holidays or non-working days a year in spite of still being a developing country in Asia. One-third of the number of weeks this year 2022, that is 17 out of 52, has a public holiday falling within the working week from Monday – Friday.

According to the government’s Printing Department’s Desk Calendar 2022, which carries the slogan “A Prosperous Nation through the Efficient Public Service”, there is a list of 28 non-weekend holidays, out of which 20 falls on working days.

Alas! If the mid-week holiday falls on Thursday, we must count two non-working days for that week – both Thursday and Friday; if it falls on Tuesday, we must also count two non-working days for the week – both Monday and Tuesday, as people take the day off. If the holiday falls on Wednesday, we still have the possibility of extending it for two more days. In fact, we have also got enough number of annual and casual leave days in the public sector to accommodate such decisions. Public sector employees have got 24 annual leave and 21 casual leave days.

Together with 45 annual and casual leave days, 25 poya and statutory holidays, and 103 weekend holidays, technically the public sector has 192 working days for this year. Most probably, no country in Asia would be having such luxurious working conditions for the public sector. Under these circumstances, any rational man would choose a public sector job with a life-time monthly income, even by leaving a better-paid job elsewhere.

Jobs from the politicians

The pressure for obtaining a public sector job has been mounting over the years, not only because such public sector jobs are more lucrative than any other, but also because private investment and business expansion has been inadequate. Therefore, while idling without a job, why not go after a politician who would send the unemployed to public sector agencies?

There is nothing surprising about Sri Lanka’s poor record of foreign investment, because any investor who looks at our working day calendar as well as other labour market laws would consider more favourable investment environments in other countries. For instance, compared with Sri Lanka’s annual leave and holiday entitlement of 70 days a year, Thailand has 22 leave days and holidays only.

The public sector employment has increased by 500,000 in net terms over the past 15 years from 2005-2020, while the increase in the labour force has been only 350,000. The swelling of the public sector with unproductive jobs has pressurised the government spending on the one hand, while sabotaging the potential private sector expansion on the other hand.

Sri Lanka’s low labour productivity has become a critical issue hindering the country’s economic development as well as obstructing even the increase in real wages and living standards of the working people, because there has been no genuine effort for labour market reforms. Sri Lanka has more than 40 Acts and Ordinances governing employment, most of them are half a century old, and sometimes stretched back to colonial times. Trade unions of the employees, backed by the political parties don’t want any government to touch them, nor does the governments touch them for reforms. So they continue unhindered.

Reaping as we sow

Does our holiday pattern and labour laws have any connection to the current economic crisis? An analytical answer to this question is beyond our scope today. But frankly speaking, it does! If our productivity is low, but the nominal salaries continued to rise with “printed money”, obviously, there is a direct relationship between our working norms and today’s economic crisis.

It’s all about government spending more than its tax revenue on the one hand and, spending on unproductive public sector which makes sub-standard contribution to the economic development on the other hand. At least partially, the economic crisis is about reaping the fruits of what was planted.