General holiday for three consecutive days from tomorrow

The government has again announced a three-day general holiday (August 5, 6 and 7) from tomorrow Monday after a few days off last month and a few more days of limited office hours due to the demand for job quota reforms. The Ministry of Public Administration has issued a notification in this regard on Sunday afternoon.

A curfew has been enforced from 6 pm till further notice on Sunday due to clashes across the country. This decision will be effective for all divisional headquarters, city corporation, municipality, industrial area, district and upazila headquarters including Dhaka.

A general holiday was declared after curfew was imposed. According to the notification of the Ministry of Public Administration, this holiday has been given by executive order. The conditions of leave are same as previous leave. All Government, Semi-Government, Autonomous, Semi-Autonomous and Private offices will remain closed during the general holidays. However, vehicles and workers engaged in essential services such as electricity, water, gas, other fuels, fire service and operations of ports, cleaning, telephone, internet, postal service and related activities will be outside the ambit of this holiday.

Offices dealing with urgent work will also be out of the ambit of this holiday. On the other hand, the Supreme Court will issue directives regarding the conduct of court proceedings and the Bangladesh Bank will issue directives regarding the conduct of banking proceedings, as stated in the notification.

Earlier, the government imposed a curfew across the country on the night of July 19. At that time, the government first announced two days (July 21 and 22) as a general holiday across the country. Later it was increased. At one point the office ran on a limited schedule for a few days. Then from July 31, office was resumed in normal schedule.

The anti-discrimination student movement has announced a one-point demand for the resignation of the government on August 3 (Saturday). They have called for non-cooperation movement from today. Clashes have taken place in different areas of the country including Dhaka. So far 43 people have lost their lives in these incidents. In such a situation, general holiday was declared for three consecutive days after curfew was imposed.