Holidays largesse

The confluence of Corpus Christi, Labour Day and Eid is notable enough. But the way these holidays straddled weekends, automatically turning one-day holidays into dayslong events, have been a kind of gift to the exhausted.

That’s one way of looking at it.

Another is this: these holidays have dealt a tremendous blow to our nation’s productivity.

Three holidays in one month above and beyond normal weekends is bad enough. But when these expand to include informal extensions due to falling close to the weekend (as occurred when Corpus Christi fell on a Thursday) is a serious wake-up call.

It has become quite normal for workers to determine that the day after a holiday that leads into a weekend, worse if it is one of those long weekends like last week, provides a licence to have that day off also.

Then there is the tendency to require a day to recover from it all. And there are more of those days to come: August, October and December have two holidays each.

Our holidays are the by-product of our spectacular diversity.

We do not begrudge the various groups for whom these occasions are commemorated.

But the time has come for a serious reassessment of our national holiday scheme. Surely there is a better way to honour our diversity while at the same time safeguarding our national productivity? Are there some holidays with perhaps a historical bias in sway of certain religions over others? Can these be streamlined? The problem though also relates to a lack of political will.

Politicians are often excited to announce holidays — especially new ones. However, they are unwilling to remove a holiday from the calendar, mindful of the kind of mentality we are accustomed to propagating in Trinidad and Tobago.

That said, there are some benefits to our holiday largesse.

The holidays this month were opportunities for us to appreciate our diversity as a people, which is one of our strongest assets. We must redouble efforts to live up to the messages behind these holidays. Labour Day is a reminder of the importance of collective action, Eid of charity, and Corpus Christi joy.

Also, these holidays — if we cannot streamline them — can at least be put to some productive end. They provide opportunities for domestic tourism by emphasising different aspects of our history, culture and demographics.

There is no reason why festivals and events tied to these holidays cannot be geared towards a tourist audience.

Trinidad-based events could also be packaged with cultural events in Tobago, achieving an enhanced tourist product. Of course, this would require a far more reliable transport link between the islands to work.

All of this points to the fact that if we cannot manage to deal with our more basic problems like inter-island infrastructure, then we will be unable to handle other issues.

In the end, citizens may ironically need more of these holidays to continue to enjoy some semblance of normal life.