Gov’t Scraping AU Holiday ‘Useless’ – MP

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Ashaiman, Henry Ernest Norgbey has described the decision by the Akufo-Addo led administration to scrap AU and Republic Days as public holidays, replacing them with Constitution and Kwame Nkrumah Memorial and Founders Days as useless.

According to him, the NPP government is leading on a trend of failure and causing havoc to the citizens of the country adding that, Africa Union day should be celebrated.

Government earlier today scrapped AU and Republic Days as public holidays, replacing them with Constitution and Kwame Nkrumah Memorial and Founders Days.

Constitution, Kwame Nkrumah Memorial and Founders’ Days will be celebrated on January 7, September 21 and August 4.

August 4 of every year will henceforth be known as Founders Day.

Also, according to government, the birthday of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, which hitherto was marked as the country’s Founders Day, will now be known as Nkrumah Memorial Day while January 7 will be known as Constitution Day.

All three days will be observed as statutory holidays in addition to the already existing commemorative days, July 1 and May 25 — Republic Day and AU Day, respectively.

This comes after the government tabled an amendment to the Public Holiday (Amendment) Bill 2018 in parliament on Thursday, 13 December 2018.

But speaking in an interview on Citi FM’s Eyewitness News on Thursday, 13 December 2018, Ernest Norgbey said: “This comes as a huge surprise because I know that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the President of Ghana, is knowledgeable enough to know what (Nkrumah) did is the foundation and the birthing of Ghana. So why entertain this thought?

“People around him are going to sell to him this theory that if we have more founders then let’s recognise the UGCC as the founders.

“You can’t argue the NPP is the offspring of the UGCC movement, and they can celebrate UGCC as many days of the year as they want, they can celebrate it 365 days of the year, but it can’t be a national event.”

He added: “The destiny of Ghana is in our own hands, that would materialize in daily hardwork and not always of holiday operation. We can’t malign our history to this low level. We can still go to work and do a specific duty in their honor. It should not always be about holidays.”